
Class 

Book 



CoptglifN . 



CDFVRIGMT DEPOSIT. 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

LETTERS TO MEN 



BY 
WILLIAM FRASER McDOWELL 




New York : EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



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Copyright, 1913, by 
WILLIAM FRASER McDOWELL 



©GLASS 267 6 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword v 

Letter I 
The Man Himself i 

Letter II 
Religion 17 

Letter III 
A Man's Religious Beliefs 33 

Letter IV 
The Beliefs of Jesus Christ 53 

Letter V 
A Man's Relations 68 

Letter VI 
His Human Relations 86 

Letter VII 
A Man's Character 105 

Letter VIII 

Keeping Life Right 122 

iii 



CONTENTS 

Letter IX 
The Unity of a Man's Life 137 

Letter X 
A Modern Man's Modern Bible.. 152 

Letter XI 

A Religious Man in Modern 
Society 165 

Letter XII 
A Man's Religious Experience... 179 

Letter XIII 
A Man's Activities . 195 

Letter XIV 
The Endless Life 211 



IV 



FOREWORD 

A preface to a small volume of 
letters? The foreword to a letter is 
not important; the postscript is the 
thing. But if there must be a fore- 
word, let it be this: In a certain 
Annual Conference a generous 
brother was reading the resolutions 
of appreciation and thanks. Con- 
cerning the presiding bishop he said: 
'The bishop's sermons, lectures, and 
addresses have been greatly bene- 
fited by the brethren/' And the 
bishop liked it. He will like it now 
if these familiar letters are in any 
measure benefited by the dear 
brethren to whom in love they are 
addressed. 

I have to thank the editor and 
publishers of the Adult Bible Class 



FOREWORD 

Monthly for the double privilege of 
writing the letters for that maga- 
zine and of reprinting them now in 
this small volume. 

And I close the preface with the 
prayer most often on my lips as I 
have been writing to you, the words 
of that immortal man whose letters 
on religion are alive to this day: 
1 'Grace be with you all." 

Ever yours, 



VI 



LETTER I 
The Man Himself 

Dear Brethren: It is my priv- 
ilege to write you a few letters on 
the important and interesting sub- 
ject of "A Man's Religion/ ' In- 
deed, I might well say these subjects, 
for men are important and interest- 
ing, religion is important and inter- 
esting, and taken together they are 
exceedingly so. 

My very first feeling, as I begin, 
is one of keen sorrow for you and 
myself that we did not obtain such 
a series of letters, familiar and in- 
timate in form, from our great 
philosopher and believer, guide, and 
teacher, the late Professor Borden P. 
Bowne. Far away from all his 
books, I am trying to recall what he 
did say, and to think what he would 
I 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

say to you about yourselves and 
about religion if he were writing 
these letters. 

This first one is begun as we are 
making our slow way over the 
Mediterranean from the Church in 
America to the Church in Southern 
Asia. Over these waters Saint Paul 
sailed long ago, though not in such 
comfort as ours. Not far from 
where we ride to-day he wrote his 
immortal letters on religion when 
the Christian Church was young. 
Our errand on this journey and my 
desire in these brief letters are the 
same as his. We, like the great 
apostle, are going with the Christ 
and the cross to a people already 
"very religious/ 9 The people of 
Athens had an altar to the "un- 
known God." The people of India 
have so many gods they cannot 
count them with any accuracy. 

2 



LETTERS TO MEN 

Within the next few days we shall 
be within hailing distance of Athens 
and Corinth and Crete; of the Holy 
Land and Sinai. We shall actually 
touch Egypt with its history and its 
mystery. We shall be forced to 
think of lawgiver, prophets, apos- 
tles, and the early life of our Lord. 
We shall read again those parts of 
the Old and the New Testaments 
most clearly related to these re- 
gions; and all the while we shall be 
going steadily forward, in the in- 
terest of men and religion, to Asia 
with its uncounted temples and gods. 
Everywhere around the world we 
shall be in touch with religious his- 
tory, practices, beliefs, institutions, 
and life. We shall see many forms 
of faith and practice — some good, 
some bad, some unspeakable, but 
all full of meaning. We shall see 
many peoples, and people of all 
3 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

classes and conditions, and return at 
last, when the summer is young 
again, to our own land and our 
own people. Is there a word that 
may be said to the men at home 
and abroad which shall in some 
measure define and interpret men to 
themselves as religious, and religion 
to them as men? Is there any unity 
between countries as well as cen- 
turies? Is there a common word on 
religion that may be said to men 
everywhere? I devoutly pray that 
the Holy Spirit may guide me as I 
write these familiar letters to you 
in the name of the Man of Galilee. 

Perhaps my very first word should 
be about you yourselves as men, or 
about ourselves as men. We have 
been written about and talked about 
for many centuries. Sometimes this 
has been done in the language of 
theology, sometimes in the language 

4 



LETTERS TO MEN 

of science and philosophy, sometimes 
in the language of poetry, some- 
times in eulogy like that of the 
psalmist or that of the dramatist, 
sometimes in the language of de- 
nunciation and despair. It has not 
always been easy for a plain man to 
recognize himself under these forms 
of thought and speech, though all of 
them may be partly, even largely, 
true. For a man does not ordinarily 
think of himself as a theological, a 
philosophical, or a poetical being. 
He does not, as a rule, in his com- 
mon practice use these terms, how- 
ever true they are. He thinks of 
himself in terms of the shop, the 
street, the office, the farm, the 
home — the terms of what is called 
daily life. The normal man, to 
whom I am writing, does not deny 
the language of theology or philos- 
ophy or poetry. He only wants it 
5 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

translated into the terms of common 
life. He likes to hear, as he likes to 
strike, the personal note. Certain 
men appeal to him because they 
seem such real men. He knows 
himself as a personal being and looks 
upon religion as a personal matter. 
He is not so sure of either theology 
or science or philosophy. 

Much more than you ordinarily 
think, however, these things do af- 
fect you and are interwoven with 
your thoughts about yourselves. 
They are really very practical mat- 
ters, theology and philosophy are. 
Most men are both theologians and 
philosophers, and many have a dash 
of the poet in them. And I am ex- 
ceedingly glad to be writing these 
letters at a time when the personal, 
human note is so dominant in theol- 
ogy and philosophy. Patrick Geddes 
once said, rather sharply, "There are 
6 



LETTERS TO MEN 

two kinds of theologians: one the 
kind that studies and criticizes other 
theologians, the other the theologian 
that has a religious experience." 
The prevailing note in theology- 
to-day is the divine-human note, the 
personal note. The only man who 
now gets a hearing in theology is 
the one who tries to answer in terms 
of human life the questions of 
human life. The theologian must 
answer for religion the questions of 
the common man, but he must do it 
in the terms of life, the life of to-day 
and to-morrow. 

Now, in order to obtain a starting 
point, I have asked a devout, in- 
telligent, thoughtful modern man to 
give me his thought of himself with 
this large subject in view. This is 
substantially what he said, after 
thinking it all over carefully: 

"I am a person of affections, 
7 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

opinions, beliefs, tempers, disposi- 
tion, activities, relations, and hopes. 
I do not always know what is right, 
and I do not always do what is 
right. I have ideals far beyond my 
achievements either in character or 
conduct. I have in my past and in 
my present certain moral imperfec- 
tions amounting to actual wrong. I 
do not seem able to get rid either of 
the disposition to do wrong or the 
results of doing wrong after it has 
been done. At the same time I have 
also a love for the right and a desire 
to do it, but I do not always seem 
able to do what I know to be right. 
I have my own opinions about a 
lot of things, and am, in darkness 
and mystery about a lot more. I 
have as much temper, or as many 
tempers, some good, some bad, as 
any one man ought to carry around 
with him. I am blessed or other- 
8 



LETTERS TO MEN 

wise by a rather abundant disposi- 
tion, which is, like the taste of a 
certain man, 'some of it good/ I 
am not naturally a skeptic. I pre- 
fer to believe rather than to doubt. 
I used to think it did not matter 
much what a man believed, but 
only how he lived. I have found 
out that a right belief mightily 
helps to a right life, and I have also 
found out that right life makes 
faith in right easier and surer. I 
am intensely interested in and grate- 
ful for everything that helps me to 
be a better man. A large part of 
my life is taken up with making a 
living for myself and my family — 
chiefly for my family. All this 
seems to me a part of my real life, 
and I must have a religion that 
takes my occupation into account. 
Otherwise it is of small value to 
me. I have a lot of activities — 
9 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

political, social, and philanthropic — 
that are not a part of my reg- 
ular occupation, but are a very 
large part of my real life. Religion 
must be in them also, it seems to 
me. I am a man of deep affection 
and strong friendships. My daily 
life is gladly bound up with my 
family and with my friends. Life 
does not seem to offer anything 
better than these relations. I do 
not love all men equally well. I 
find it hard, almost impossible, to 
love some men at all, but I do not 
find it hard to wish all men well 
and to do what I can for their good. 
I belong to the Church and believe 
in it. 

"My theology, what I have, is 
very simple, my love for God very 
sincere. Many questions do not in- 
terest me, though I have great 
patience with men disturbed by 
10 



LETTERS TO MEN 

doubts. I pray, though prayer is a 
mystery, because, somehow, prayer 
seems to bring me good. It seems 
more reasonable and much more 
profitable to pray than not to. I 
read my Bible, though it does not all 
seem equally interesting or valuable 
to me, because, somehow, that helps 
me in my daily life. If I knew a 
better book, one that did me more 
good, I should use it. I feel good 
when I do good or am good, and 
I 'catch it' inside of me when I 
do wrong. I would like to be one 
of Jesus Christ's true and steadfast 
friends. He deserves the best any 
man can give him, and his friend- 
ship would be good for me. I 
think it would be a good world if 
Jesus Christ and his principles were 
everywhere dominant. 

"I am immensely interested in 
the present world, the life that 
ii 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

now is. It seems good to me to be 
alive, with such activities, such per- 
sonal possibilities, and such relations 
as life offers. I have lost a lot of 
friends and loved ones by death. I 
hope to find them again when death 
comes to me. They live still in my 
love. I cannot believe that they 
have ceased to live except in my 
love. So, though I cannot see nor 
prove, I hold fast with Jesus Christ 
to another life. There ought to be 
a place somewhere for a man to be 
perfectly free from sin, from trouble, 
and from death: a place where re- 
lations are perfect and faith is 
unclouded. All this makes up my 
life as a man. It does not seem 
very profound. It seems really very 
ordinary to me, but life itself per- 
haps is ordinary. Anyhow, these 
statements in themselves and their 
implications tell you pretty clearly 
12 



LETTERS TO MEN 

what at least one man is and de- 
sires. And I find men generally very 
much like myself/ ' 

So he spoke for himself, and I 
doubt not for many others. He said, 
as anyone can see, that he was a per- 
son of faults and virtues, of good and 
evil, of high ideals and common 
practices, of activities, opinions, be- 
liefs, relations, and hopes. That is 
about what a man is, about what 
you are. In thinking of a man's 
religion it is just about this kind of 
a man that we must think. The 
proportions of these elements in dif- 
ferent men vary greatly. Not every 
man could give such a good account 
of himself, but in differing propor- 
tions these are the things belonging 
to a man. The language of eulogy 
is as out of place as the language of 
denunciation. This tells the story of 
need and of promise, of necessity 
13 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

and of possibility. Religion must be 
for man as he was, and is, and ought 
to be. 

And that makes religion seem 
worth while. Somehow as this 
strong, wholesome, natural man 
talked of his life, his sins, his beliefs, 
his activities, his relations, his affec- 
tions, his hopes for a better future, 
both the man himself and the 
religion for him took on a kind of 
glory. One can easily understand 
God's own interest in a man if this 
is what a man is like. One can 
easily understand how all the love 
and activities of God himself would 
break out of any sky into any world 
where such a being as this man 
dwells. We are still sailing through 
these Eastern waters. Just yonder, 
some men like this — men of life, of 
love, of hate, of wrong, of right, of 
families, of trade, of friendships, 

14 






LETTERS TO MEN 

of hopes, men who were just men — 
were met once by Another. No 
wonder the whole country where he 
came to them is called the Holy 
Land to this day, for in that land 
Jesus Christ came to men as they 
were, men bearing names familiar to 
us, men engaged as men still are, 
there and elsewhere. He came to 
them in their sins, in their opinions, 
in their tempers, in their beliefs and 
doubts, in their activities and their 
friendships, in their hopes for a 
better world here and hereafter. 

He brought his life among them, 
and the life was their light. He, 
full of grace and truth, came to 
them, and a lot of those strong, 
natural men, receiving him, became 
sons of God themselves. They got 
rid of their wrong lives and bad 
tendencies and evil tempers. They 
became new men without becoming 
15 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

old men. Their faith, their activi- 
ties, their relations, their hopes were 
all transformed by their contact with 
him. In him was life, and the life 
was the light of men. Definitions 
are not necessary. Perhaps they are 
impossible. But a man is the being 
for whom and to whom Jesus Christ 
came. And the religion of Jesus 
Christ is for the man of Jesus 

Christ. 

Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



16 



LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER II 
Religion 

Dear Brethren: You will re- 
member that in the first letter on 
this subject I quoted at some length 
a man's statement about himself. 
He seemed to speak for men gener- 
ally. Many men recognized them- 
selves in the portrait this one man 
drew. I was so interested in what 
he said that I asked him to tell me 
what he thought of religion, and he 
answered about as follows: 

"I tried for a good many years to 
find and then to frame a definition 
of religion. It seemed to me that I 
could not understand the thing un- 
less I had and could repeat a defini- 
tion of it. I now think that this 
desire for an exact and convenient 
phrase was not based upon wisdom, 
17 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

that in all such personal matters as 
religion, definitions must be inade- 
quate and unsatisfactory. The 
richest and deepest aspects of life 
cannot be put into a sentence. The 
classic and traditional definitions of 
religion seem to me especially par- 
tial and outworn, the echoes of a 
day when the whole stress of religion 
was laid upon part of it. Take this 
one for example: 'Religion is the 
relation between God and man, or 
between the worshiper and the ob- 
ject of his worship/ That surely is 
based upon the idea of worship as 
the chief feature of religion. Now, 
worship seems to me a very real and 
essential part of religion, but as a 
man I have so many other features 
in my life that this one idea, how- 
ever large, will not cover them all. 

"Or take this one: 'Religion is the 
life of God in the soul of man/ 
18 



LETTERS TO MEN 

That seems open to the same objec- 
tion. It does not cover all that 
belongs to me as a man. Of course, 
it is easy to quote certain familiar 
verses from the Bible, as though 
they covered the whole case and 
were meant so to do, but as I grow 
older and my life grows fuller and 
richer I do not find that any one 
passage, however true, fully states 
my experience. I used to repeat, as 
though they were final, the words 
of Micah 6. 8: 'He hath showed 
thee, O man, what is good; and 
what doth Jehovah require of thee, 
but to do justly, and to love kind- 
ness, and to walk humbly with thy 
God?' I now think that the Lord 
requires much besides that. Then I 
used with much satisfaction the 
words of Saint James about pure 
religion: 'Pure religion and unde- 
filed before our God and Father is 
19 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

this, to visit the fatherless and wid- 
ows in their affliction, and to keep 
oneself unspotted from the world.' 

"As the years have gone all these 
words have meant more and more 
to me as a religious man, but less 
and less as definitions of religion. 
And I do not think this is because 
life is growing vague, but because it 
is growing rich. I would not like 
to attempt now to put into a sen- 
tence the words of eternal life. 

"And this corresponds with my 
experience in other things. I was a 
young man when the Civil War 
came. I defined patriotism and 
loyalty then in a very definite and 
brief fashion. They meant saving 
the Union by going to the front. 
They still mean the life of the 
Union, only the whole meaning has 
enlarged so that my old patriotism 
seems very meager, though it was 

20 



LETTERS TO MEN 

very real and true. I would once 
have defined love with a single fea- 
ture and one person almost exclu- 
sively in view. The years have 
brought to us children and grand- 
children, new relation to our own 
parents and to friends. Sorrow and 
bereavement have broken into love, 
and now love defies definition, not 
because it has grown thin, but be- 
cause it has become rich. So with 
this matter of religion. Once I 
think I could have said in a sen- 
tence what it was. It meant then 
right beliefs. Now it means all that 
and a thousand things besides. 

"I read a sentence the other day 
which seemed very suggestive to me : 
'We must enlarge our definitions if 
we are to keep them/ I judge 
that this enlargement of idea comes 
with the enlargement of religious 
life. Religion becomes a bigger and 

21 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

better thing as a man becomes a 
bigger and a better man. Somehow 
the personal element looms ever 
larger and religion expands with 
growing character. 

"I am deeply interested in the 
fact that religion of some sort seems 
to be universal. I used to think that 
some men were religious and others 
wholly without religion; just as I 
used to think that heathenism was 
equivalent to irreligion. I do not 
know how the human race got this 
universal tendency, but it certainly 
has it. I have read a lot of books 
about it, some of them enlightening 
and some not. I am a plain man, 
not a philosopher or a historian, and 
I am grateful for all the real work of 
the philosophers and historians, be- 
cause religion seems to me the most 
important interest of life, and I 
want all the light I can get upon 

22 






LETTERS TO MEN 

it. But, after all, as I look at it, the 
real business is not explaining the 
philosophy or accounting for the 
origin of religion in the race. It is 
not even making men religious. It 
is to give men with a wrong religion 
a right one, men with wrong beliefs, 
wrong practices, wrong relations, 
wrong activities, wrong lives, wrong 
ideals, wrong worship, right beliefs, 
right practices, right relations, right 
activities, right lives, right ideals, 
and right worship. Some religions 
seem better than others and some 
men better than others. Each of 
the great religions of the world 
seems to have some good in it, and 
this makes me glad. And I have 
never personally known a man with- 
out some good quality or qualities. 
And I am glad of that, for this gives 
a point of contact for true religion. 
I have for many years been studying 
23 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

the question of a man's religion in 
the lives of religious men in the 
biographies of the most eminent 
saints in history. Some men greatly 
commend themselves and their re- 
ligion by one or more admirable 
features. I admire the teaching of 
some more than I do their personal 
character. I admire some of the 
teaching of some, but balk at the 
rest. I find certain practices of 
some very good and wholesome, and 
I rejoice in every piece of excellence 
I find anywhere. One day, some 
years ago, a friend said to me, 'Did 
you ever study Jesus as a religious 
man, not to discover the system he 
established, but to ascertain the re- 
ligion of his own life?' I never had, 
but for years I have been doing it. 
I cannot begin to tell you what it 
has meant to me to study Jesus and 
his life in this way. It brings him 
24 



LETTERS TO MEN 

into life in a positively new sense to 
live with him in the religion he prac- 
ticed, the faith he held, the activi- 
ties of his personal life, the relations 
he sustained as a religious man, re- 
lations to God and relations to men, 
relations to life itself. Somehow the 
religion he founded grips me more 
strongly as I see how it was also the 
religion he practiced. The things he 
believed seem worth believing. His 
creed, though never formally stated 
in the terms of a creed, embraces the 
best body of beliefs I have ever 
found. His practices constitute the 
best example I have found for my 
own life. He seemed to know how 
to live so as to keep his own life free 
from evil and full of grace and truth ; 
and his relations with men, women, 
and children seem ideal. His activi- 
ties in the world are such activities 
as the world of our day needs quite 
25 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

as much as did the world of his day. 
His habits of prayer and worship are 
habits worthy of becoming universal. 
You see what I mean: I interpret 
religion in the light of Jesus's life as 
a religious person, in the light of the 
religion he practiced. His charac- 
ter, his relation to God, his attitude 
to truth, his faith, his activities, his 
habits, his relations to others are all 
that logic or life or love require. I 
could not easily give a definition of 
religion, but I can point to Jesus as 
a religious Person and in him the 
term becomes plain. He is the best 
definition of religion that I have 
ever seen, and I do not seek any 
further for a satisfactory definition. 
If anybody asks me how I define 
religion, I answer that a definition 
can be found in Jesus Christ. And 
I do not sing any more, as I used to, 
'The old-time religion is good enough 
26 



LETTERS TO MEN 

for me/ Nor do I say that of even 
my mother's religion. The only re- 
ligion that seems good enough to 
sing about or to practice, to live by 
or to die by, is the religion of Jesus 
Christ. I am always afraid of stop- 
ping somewhere short of that per- 
fect thing. Studying Jesus Christ 
in this light has been vastly more 
fruitful to me than raising the ques- 
tion, 'What would Jesus do?' Any- 
how, it has given me a new idea of 
religion. Christianity does not seem 
so much like a system as it did, and 
it does seem a lot more personal. I 
think of the religion of Jesus Christ 
now, not chiefly as something re- 
ceived from him, but, rather, as a 
most precious thing shared with 
him. It brings both him and his 
religion a great deal closer to my 
life to think of them in this way. 
"Perhaps this is as good a place 
27 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

as any to speak of some fundamental 
tests which it seems to me any reli- 
gion must meet. If a religion is to 
claim a whole man's whole life, it 
must meet certain fundamental re- 
quirements. They are not abstract 
nor impersonal conditions. I would 
rather say they are very vital, if 
that word did not seem somewhat 
overworked. But as it lies in my 
mind, or rather as it seems to me 
in the whole of me, any religion that 
is good for a man must be mentally 
straight and right. What is that 
word about loving God with all 
your mind? Well, it seems to me 
that if we are to love him with our 
minds, he must be the kind of God 
who can be loved without violating 
or sacrificing or crucifying a man's 
thinking powers. O, I do not insist 
that there shall be no mysteries or 
perplexities in religion, but I do 
28 



LETTERS TO MEN 

insist that there must not be any 
rank and gross absurdities and con- 
tradictions in it. Faith must not be 
equivalent to folly, nor must it 
mean believing the things a man 
knows are not true. A religious 
man need not be a great or profound 
thinker, but his religion must not 
destroy, but must, rather, save his 
fundamental mental processes and 
powers. Even a revelation must be 
rational and not irrational. Here 
again the life of Jesus is exceedingly 
luminous. He did not set aside his 
mind nor destroy it in order to be 
devout and believing. I do not 
raise here the question of freedom to 
think, but only the question of 
straight thinking. 

"So, also, it seems to me a reli- 
gion ought to be good for a man's 
morals and satisfy his conscience. 
Some of the so-called religious 
29 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

teachings, and much of the reli- 
gious practice of the world, have 
been pretty bad morally. An 
awakened and enlightened con- 
science has some rights. Even in 
the name of religion a man must 
not be commanded or even per- 
mitted to do wrong. Who was it 
that said that life is three fourths 
conduct'? Matthew Arnold, I 
think. Well, whatever part of it is 
conduct must be right conduct, and 
religion must go all the time that 
way. This seems utterly common- 
place, and I would not be saying it 
if there had not arisen in recent 
years, and had not existed for many 
years, more than one religion intel- 
lectually absurd and morally wrong. 
If religion goes astray with reference 
to true conscience and normal 
brains, it will not do for men. 

"And it must have regard for a 
30 



LETTERS TO MEN 

man's heart. Some of the gods, 
both of theology and mythology, 
have been altogether unlovely and 
unlovable. Commandments to love 
a god are of no use if the god is a 
tyrant or a monster. Such a god can 
just issue all the commandments he 
pleases and men will simply laugh at 
him, despise him, and hate him, as 
they ought. Love is about the best 
thing in the world and belongs in a 
man's religion. It is not easy to 
love a list of attributes nor an im- 
personal deity. But one is never 
surprised at Jesus Christ's love for 
God. He knew God as a lovely and 
lovable Person. He did not have to 
stultify his intellect, nor violate his 
conscience, nor suppress his affec- 
tions because of his God. It seems 
to me that one of the real tasks of 
religious teachers is to show to men 
how lovable the God of Jesus Christ 
3i 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

is. As a religious man I must be on 
friendly terms with my God and 
my brethren. I cannot make friends 
with certain kinds of people very 
easily, and with certain kinds of 
gods it is wholly impossible. 

"Now this, and much more, is 
about what I think about religion. 
Everything is embraced in this." 

So spoke my wise and thoughtful 
friend. Whether I can get him to 
speak any further I cannot say, but 
he certainly has indicated the way 
we must go in our further corre- 
spondence. It will be worth our 
while to master the religion which 
Jesus Christ practiced. Nothing 
else at present looks as good as this. 
He is certainly the best Man who has 
ever lived. His religion looks like the 
best religion for a man. Anyhow, I 
think it will appear so as we go on. 
Ever yours, W. F. M. 

32 



LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER III 
A Man's Religious Beliefs 

Dear Brethren: The time was 
when this would have been the chief 
subject of such letters as these. If 
I had been writing to you in the 
creed-making ages, the supreme em- 
phasis would have been on this 
phase of religion. And our discus- 
sion would have been regarded as 
wholly incomplete if it failed to lay 
down a fairly full and comprehen- 
sive system of beliefs. It has been 
rather customary to identify beliefs 
with creeds, faith with dogma, and 
religion with theology. Much of the 
modern reaction against creeds, dog- 
mas, and theology is due to this 
confusion. 

Now, we are proceeding in our 
correspondence on the theory that 
33 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

religion is a personal matter. In 
thinking of ourselves as men, you 
remember, we decided that we are 
persons of beliefs, opinions, affec- 
tions, tempers, dispositions, activi- 
ties, worship, relations, ideals, and 
hopes. And we are anxious to find 
a way of life as thus constituted, a 
way by which life can be developed 
and maintained with ever enlarging 
power, growing beauty, and increas- 
ing perfection. Our search is never 
for a creed or a program, but always 
for a way of life, and we test creeds 
and programs by their relation to 
this larger and better thing. We 
desire right beliefs as a way to right 
lives. We would like to find the 
truth, not because we are philos- 
ophers or scientists, but because we 
are men. We have vastly more than 
an academic interest in truth. And, 
by the same token, we have much 

34 






LETTERS TO MEN 

more than a theologian's interest in 
religious beliefs, or creeds, or faith. 
These are, with us, not matters of 
speculation, but of personal life or 
death. If a theologian goes wrong 
in making up his system, he is a 
heretic and may be tried for heresy; 
but if a man goes wrong in his faith, 
he misses the way of life, and 
missing that is absolutely fatal to a 
man. 

It is my good fortune to meet 
every year many young men in our 
colleges and universities. They, per- 
haps more than most people, are 
disturbed in their faith by the con- 
ditions of modern life and thought. 
Many of them have found serious 
difficulty in adjusting their early 
creeds to their new learning. It is 
a time when the faith of many men, 
in college and out, is unsettled. You 
meet many men who are frightened, 
35 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

or are uncertain, or are noisily dog- 
matic on one side or the other, or 
are waiting to see what happens, or 
are just holding fast with a grim 
determination not to let go, or have 
found the center of peace in their 
believing and are living their lives 
in strength, sanity, and sweetness, 
knowing Whom they have believed 
and that he is able to keep the lives 
they have committed to him. Some 
time ago one of the best of these 
disturbed men came to me with a 
statement of his perplexities. It 
seemed to him that everything was 
torn up by the roots. He was al- 
most hopelessly bewildered. He was 
not an unbeliever, but his house had 
fallen down about him and he was 
in despair. He said frankly: "It 
looks to me as if everything I have 
ever believed has either been totally 
changed or wholly destroyed, and I 

36 



LETTERS TO MEN 

cannot get my bearings. And I 
simply cannot live this way. I must 
either throw it all over and get 
along the best I can, or I must get a 
new hold so as to live. Now, do not 
tell me to patch up my old faith, or 
to save what few beliefs I can out of 
the wreck. If that is all there is to 
it, there is not enough in it for a 
man like me. I do not ask for many 
beliefs. I am quite willing to let a 
few of my old ones go. They never 
meant much, anyhow. But if I am 
to have any faith at all, it must be 
strong and solid, not a patchwork or 
a makeshift, for I must rest my 
whole weight on it. I can stand 
some mysteries, but I cannot com- 
promise in this matter. Can you 
help me?" 

What can be said to a man in this 
condition? Something must be said. 
He cannot be ignored; he must not 
37 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

be denounced as an infidel; he can- 
not be treated as a child. Any re- 
ligious teacher ought to rejoice in 
the chance to help such a man as 
this. Maybe I am writing to a lot 
of men in just about this state of 
mind. What then shall I say to 
you? 

First: You are not the first man in 
history to experience a commotion 
in your faith. All the ages have 
been ages of transition, and in such 
ages exactly such experiences as 
yours are always occurring. Men 
have always been learning something 
new and throwing off something old. 
It was true in the time of Jesus 
and Paul, the times of Athanasius, 
Luther, and Wesley. Indeed, every 
one of these great teachers created 
or discovered and dealt with condi- 
tions like those that exist to-day. 
Do not regard yourself, therefore, as 

38 



LETTERS TO MEN 

an outcast or an infidel because of 
this commotion. It takes something 
else to make outcasts and infidels, 
and I trust you are free from that 
something else. 

Second: Do not be disturbed over 
the necessity of letting go some of 
the opinions you have held, though 
you may have thought of them as 
parts of your saving faith. It is 
common experience that as the years 
pass we add to what is really es- 
sential certain things which are 
nonessential, though sometimes im- 
portant, and it gives us a wrench to 
let them go again. It looks like 
the complete destruction of faith. 
But not every belief is essential to 
salvation. A house is not destroyed 
by the breaking of a window; it 
may be improved. 

You remember the story of the 
jailer there in the book of Acts. He 
39 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

asked a simple, searching question 
that cut straight through to the 
very center. It is a man's question, 
asked like a man would ask such a 
question when he must know the 
truth. "What must I do to be 
saved?" And you remember the 
answer he received. It is a man's 
answer too, given by one of the 
truest men who have ever had any- 
thing to say about religion: "Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved/ ' I judge that 
nobody would find fault with that 
answer to this day. It is a true 
reply for all time. 

As the centuries go on many 
things will be added to that vital 
statement. Some of those things 
will be perfectly true, some of them 
doubtful; and some of the things 
held true in one age will be dropped 
by a succeeding age. It would be 
40 



LETTERS TO MEN 

an interesting study, if we had time 
to make it, to see what beliefs have 
persisted through the centuries, and 
what others have arisen, "had their 
day, and ceased to be." I think we 
should find that the fittest have 
really survived, that "what is ex- 
cellent, as God lives, is permanent." 
In spite of all variations, perver- 
sions, falsehoods, and recessions, the 
things that are fundamental have 
been fairly steady. 

Third: Remember that believing a 
thing does not make it true, and 
denying it does not make it untrue. 
Many things which men regard as 
questions of religious faith are not 
questions of faith at all. They are 
questions of fact altogether. Faith 
is not blind, but keen-eyed and 
open-eyed. It is not opposed to 
reason or vision or fact. It does 
not thrive on anything except truth. 

41 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

Believing a thing or a statement 
does not make it true. Our faith 
does not create facts. But believ- 
ing a truth makes a man, as be- 
lieving a lie unmakes him. His 
faith does not affect the fact or the 
falsehood, but it mightily affects 
him. You will not be made a better 
man or a worse man by holding cer- 
tain opinions. Nor will your be- 
lieving certain things in any degree 
affect the facts. But you will be 
made a better or worse man by your 
attitude to truth. Do not for one 
moment fall into either of two 
errors: one that you must believe 
everything in order to be saved, the 
other that it does not matter what 
you believe as long as you are sin- 
cere. This whole question is one of 
life. Believing falsehoods creates 
false lives. " Indian pantheism will 
inevitably make India." True 
42 



LETTERS TO MEN 

Christianity as surely makes 
Christendom. 

Our beliefs are not all equally 
important or fruitful in our own 
lives, and the life it produces is 
the final test of the creed. "Bring 
things to the test of life," said Saint 
Paul, and "hold fast what is good 
for life." "If the ghost that is in 
you leaves your hand the hand of a 
juggler, your heart the heart of a 
cheat, your tongue the tongue of a 
liar, be assured it is no Holy 
Ghost." 

You must remember also that in 
the realm of religion we come to our 
beliefs by the way of life, and our 
beliefs have value and reality only 
in life. It is a long way from the 
preliminary to the final experience. 
Many of the great things in religion 
have no meaning apart from our 
experience of them. The way of 
43 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

life is the way of truth. Experience, 
including obedience, is the ' 'organ 
of spiritual knowledge. " Life is the 
organ of more knowledge than logic 
alone can be. Only as a man goes 
on do certain things clear up. I 
learned the Beatitudes in my youth, 
as doubtless you did. And because 
Jesus spoke them I believed them, 
but my belief of some of them was 
formal and not vital. There is one 
which says, "Blessed are they that 
mourn, for they shall be comforted.' f 
I did not deny that; I believed it in 
a way, chiefly because he said it. 
At some stages of life it is a blind, 
hard saying. But as I came into the 
lives of men and women I saw them 
finding this wonderful sentence true, 
true in the only experiences which 
can interpret its meaning and make 
it real. These are personal letters 
I am writing, the letters of one man 

44 






LETTERS TO MEN 

to other men. Shall I tell you, then, 
in the intimacy of this correspond- 
ence, that I myself have found that 
strange beatitude true? 

For you must remember also that 
a set of beliefs grows with the 
growth of a man in life's experiences. 
They cannot be made to order, nor 
once for all. A form of words can 
be agreed upon, but a living man's 
real beliefs are not worked out in a 
council. They are developed and 
shaped in the life of the man him- 
self. A faith created in an academic 
way is usually held in the same 
academic fashion. Its hold upon 
men is slight; men's hold upon it 
is feeble and slack. We may enter 
a church by a formal assent to a 
creed which is perfectly true, but 
we do not enter into the meaning of 
the creed in any formal way. The 
fatal weakness of many creeds is 
45 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

that they are created by specula- 
tion and held apart from the burn- 
ing necessities, the fierce struggles, 
the hot trials of daily life. And 
many a man's faith breaks down in 
a crisis because his faith is formal 
and not vital. The words do not 
seem to mean anything in the crisis. 
A living faith has to be achieved, 
and it is not done either to order or 
all at once. You may share the 
same faith with many other men, 
but it is not really yours simply 
because it is theirs. 

Every Sunday I see men standing 
up in church and hear them saying, 
"I believe in God the Father Al- 
mighty." And they do. They are 
not hypocrites. But those wonder- 
ful words do not mean the same 
thing to all those men on any day, 
and they do not mean the same 
thing to any man all the time. 

4 6 



LETTERS TO MEN 

This sentence is a form, both of 
sound words and sound doctrine, 
but it may be only that unless it is 
worked into experience. It is not a 
true belief, a saving faith, until a 
man believes it with the heavens 
falling about him; believes it when 
hope is deferred, the head is faint 
and the heart sick; believes it 
through a lot of evil report, believes 
it when life is hard and bitter and 
cruel; believes it even when God 
himself seems to have forsaken a 
man. In other words, a formal 
faith can become a real faith only 
in the realm of life and experience. 
It goes to the very depths of our 
lives. "It is not the formula we 
repeat, but the principles by which 
we live." 

We do not live long nor well on 
negatives. I met a man not long 
since whose whole set of beliefs 
47 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

seemed to be made up of the things 
he did not believe. I asked him 
what he thought about God, and he 
began to tell me what he did not 
think. I asked him what he be- 
lieved about duty, and he began at 
once to enumerate the things he 
did not believe. It all seemed 
meager and pitiful for a real man. 
A man may have a very small stock 
of positive beliefs and be a very rich 
man, nevertheless. No list of nega- 
tives, however long and complete, 
can ever take the place of our 
affirmations. 

Remember also that the way into 
beliefs is the way of practice, and 
that our beliefs, if correct, con- 
stantly become larger as we use 
them. Many a man's creed repre- 
sents "the truth he has on deposit," 
not in circulation. And on deposit it 
does not grow very fast, if at all. 

4 8 



LETTERS TO MEN 

In my next letter I want to write 
about the beliefs of Jesus — not the 
creed he taught, but the creed he 
lived by and shaped his life by. How 
did he get into the beliefs he held, 
and what use did he make of them? 
Meantime may I ask you what are 
your real beliefs as a religious man? 
How did you get those beliefs, and 
what do they mean to you? Do 
they mean any more than they did 
ten years ago? And are you in the 
moral attitude toward life and truth 
that would naturally lead to truth? 
Good creeds help to make good lives, 
but good lives lead also to sound 
and right beliefs. 

I think your formal creeds are 
likely to be shorter than in the 
older days. I would say simpler 
also if the word ' 'simple' ' had not 
been much abused. Do you re- 
member MacLaren's creed as pub- 
49 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

lished a few years ago? Here it is 
again: 

"I believe in the Fatherhood of 
God ; I believe in the words of Jesus ; 
I believe in the clean heart; I be- 
lieve in the service of love; I believe 
in the unworldly life; I believe in 
the Beatitudes; I promise to trust 
God and follow Christ; to forgive 
my enemies and to seek after the 
righteousness of God." 

I can still recall with a certain 
thrill the impression this made when 
it appeared in the "Mind of the 
Master." Many men, weary of the 
longer, more elaborate formulas of 
faith, seized these strong, direct 
words eagerly and gratefully. It is 
a noble statement, noble now as 
when it first appeared. It is some- 
thing fine for a man to have made 
such an utterance for himself and 
for others. But the life can pass 

50 



LETTERS TO MEN 

out of even such sentences as these 
and they can become as formal as 
any creed in existence. 

But I ask you men to look them 
over again and see what response 
your life makes to them. There 
must be something wrong with it 
if it does not leap up to greet such 
sentiments with joy. 

I began these letters on the Medi- 
terranean Sea. We have girdled the 
globe within the year, and I am 
writing to-night in my own library 
by Lake Michigan. All the way 
around the world I have repeated 
the creed called the Apostles' Creed. 
It grew richer and richer through the 
months and the new conditions. In 
the face of gods uncounted it was 
good to believe in God the Father 
Almighty. In the face of Asia's 
degradation and despair it was good 
to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, 

51 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

and in the Holy Ghost. At Bombay 
and Singapore and Foochow we 
heard of the death of dear friends. 
Then we repeated again with a new 
joy, "I believe in the resurrection of 
the body and the life everlasting." 
Longer creeds are true. I do not 
doubt or deny them. But I have 
found this one good. Have you? 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



52 



LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER IV 

The Beliefs of Jesus Christ 

Dear Brethren: You remember 
that the man who was quoted so 
freely and fully in my first two 
letters spoke of the way he had 
come to think of the religion prac- 
ticed by the best men in history and 
notably of the religion of Jesus. He 
meant, as you recall, not the reli- 
gion which Jesus established, but 
the religion he professed, the reli- 
gion by which he lived. The char- 
acter of such a person as Jesus 
tremendously reenforces his beliefs. 
He was sane and wise, wholly free 
from all foolishness; he was free 
from even the suspicion of evil; his 
life was all that a life should be 
when judged by the highest stand- 
ards. The beliefs of such a Person 

53 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

are worth knowing. And it will be 
worth while, surely, for us men to 
learn what his living beliefs were, 
how he came to them, how he kept 
them, the use he made of them, 
their meaning in his life, and their 
value to him and to us. 

Of course, this is wholly personal. 
We are not now seeking to find or 
to formulate a set of beliefs for a 
denomination or an organization 
within a denomination. We are 
simply trying to see what was the 
faith of this one Person, in order to 
get some light upon the question of 
our own personal beliefs. We are 
not even seeking correct doctrinal 
opinions, or a new or old theology. 
All that would be interesting and 
might be profitable, but just now we 
are trying to see the working theory, 
the real, living beliefs of the one 
best Person in history. It would 

54 



LETTERS TO MEN 

be a shame that such a man as Jesus 
should live and believe and we men 
not discover the personal basis of 
his life. We must care about that 
if we care for the very best that 
there is. 

Now, suppose, in addition to read- 
ing this letter of mine, you reread 
any or all of the four Gospels, 
thinking, as you do, of Jesus and 
his beliefs, the beliefs in which and 
by which he lived in strength and 
holiness and usefulness. Mark is the 
shortest Gospel; read it through at 
a sitting. You will be struck first 
of all perhaps to see what a believer 
Jesus was. He had just as good a 
right, and just as much occasion, to 
be a skeptic as anybody ever had, 
but the note of doubt does not 
break out at all, though the cry 
of agony does come once. 

He carried with him an atmos- 

55 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

phere of belief, just as some men 
carry the opposite atmosphere. 
Thomas Arnold was said to awaken 
every morning with the feeling that 
everything was an open question. I 
think that does Arnold an injustice, 
but it represents a well-known and 
widespread mental habit. 

Goldwin Smith says of Jowett: 
"There was no clinch in his mind. 
He would have doubted and kept 
other people doubting forever. 
Whatever was advanced, his first 
impulse was always to deny." 

This was not the mental habit or 
attitude of Jesus. Right or wrong, 
he believed, and believed, as Phillips 
Brooks would say, "with his whole 
system." He did not throw the 
strength of his life into the neg- 
ative phases of life. He believed 
his beliefs. The weight of his life 
went into the positive and con- 

56 



LETTERS TO MEN 

structive forms of thought and 
activity. He was not chiefly an 
investigator and critic, though there 
was plenty of occasion for such 
work in his day. Lucy Larcom said 
Phillips Brooks was the "most liv- 
ing man" she ever saw. That was 
the way John felt about Jesus. He 
said it in the words, "In him was 
life; and the life was the light of 
men." There is something more 
than contagious in the positiveness 
of Jesus's attitude both to truth 
and activity. 

He never formulated a specific 
creed either for himself or for others, 
but he worked his way through an 
exceedingly suggestive and luminous 
set of working principles, as anyone 
can see. His creed constituted his 
working principles. And it comes 
out not all at once in a series of 
statements, but part at a time as 
57 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

his life goes on and his experience 
develops. It is easier to feel what 
he believed than to state it. Indeed, 
trying to frame and phrase the be- 
liefs of Jesus into a formal creed 
seems rather an impertinence. 

Somehow, the best way to get 
into the beliefs of Jesus is to get 
in by Jesus's way, the way of ex- 
perience, of practice; by believing 
the things he believed and doing the 
things he did. We discover in this 
way the perfectly wonderful reaction 
and interaction of his belief upon 
his life and life upon his belief. We 
discover very soon that he believed 
in goodness. Do you? He believed 
in it as a personal and a world mat- 
ter. Do you? Some men believe 
they can themselves be good, but 
they doubt the possibility of a 
good world. So they give them- 
selves to being good and let the 
58 



LETTERS TO MEN 

world take care of itself. Jesus had 
a different faith. I am not con- 
cerned now to define or to analyze 
the words so often on his lips, 
"kingdom of heaven." It is enough 
for our purpose to say that for this 
world and all worlds he was com- 
mitted to a kingdom of genuine 
goodness. And he did not regard 
it as a vain dream, an impossible 
phantasm. He believed in goodness 
both as a personal and universal 
thing, and just walked straight 
ahead in that faith to the end. His 
world was morally like ours, with 
the same tangles and perplexities, 
but with Jesus there was the clear 
note of an unquestioning belief in 
goodness. 

Contrasted with Solomon's or 

Plato's or Goethe's view of life, the 

view of Jesus is like sunshine as 

compared with fog. A certain an- 

59 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

cient moralist is said to have advised 
his students to walk carefully "the 
narrow path between right and 
wrong." It is rather a crowded 
path to-day, but Jesus is not to be 
found walking in it. 

I think we should clear up a good 
many of our current intellectual 
doubts and questions by strength- 
ening our belief in just pure 
goodness. 

I was reading a few days ago the 
story of a successful young salesman 
whose success was explained in these 
words: "He believed in the house he 
represented ; he believed in the goods 
he had to sell; he kept himself 
worthy of his employers and his em- 
ployment; he put enthusiasm and 
conscience and intelligence into his 
job and kept his accounts and his 
life ready for inspection at any 
minute/ ' I belong to a merchant 
60 



LETTERS TO MEN 

family and I liked that. And I say 
reverently that I thought at once of 
our Master. He would not be dis- 
pleased with me for it. He was al- 
ways trying to relate himself and 
his truth to us through just these 
common human experiences and oc- 
cupations. Jesus believed in the 
house he represented. He knew the 
heavenly Father and believed in 
him. He never balanced between 
the probable and the improbable. 
God was his Father and the Father 
of all men, and God was good. 
And he told men so. 

And he believed in what he had 
to offer men. He never wanted to 
exhibit his goods in a dim or uncer- 
tain light. He knew they were good. 
He had tried them himself. Knowl- 
edge of God, friendship with God, 
and Sonship to God were all good; 
all good for him. He knew it and 
61 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

wanted all men to know it. All this 
he believed would be good for other 
men. I do not mean that primarily 
he wanted men to believe a set of 
truths, even great and noble truths. 
It would be easy to say that he 
taught "the Fatherhood of God, the 
Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, the 
Friendhood of the Spirit, the Su- 
premacy of Love, and the Trans- 
forming Power." All that would be 
true, but he never taught these 
truths as propositions. He did not 
bring a statement to men; he 
brought a fact and a relation. 
These were not the formal phrases 
of a creed. These were the facts 
upon which his life was based. And 
using these as working principles life 
did not look like vanity to Jesus. 
His truth, his beliefs worked out in 
conduct and activity. His truth did 
not go out simply as a word. It 
62 



LETTERS TO MEN 

went out chiefly as a personal 
force. 

So too he evidently believed in 
the kind of service that does good. 
He was not an academic reformer, 
nor a mere preacher of crusades. 
He believed in children and set him- 
self to their care in the world. He 
believed in the redemption, not the 
destruction of men and women, and 
led a lot of them out of their old 
lives into a new. He believed in 
seizing all kinds of people at the 
point of their greatest interest and 
real power and tying them up to 
that kingdom of goodness to which 
he was giving his life. 

He tried prayer in his own life 
and experience and found it good. 
Then he commended it to other 
men. He tried communion with 
God as a personal experience and 
found it good, and commended it to 
63 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

other men. He tried the life of 
service and found it good, and com- 
mended it to other men. He be- 
lieved at the beginning in what he 
came to do. As he went on he 
continued to believe in it, and never 
had to reverse his life. His beliefs 
consisted in personal relations, vital 
truths, and a line of action. He 
tried them all out in his own ex- 
perience. They seemed to him 
worth living by and worth dying 
for. And his beliefs steadily grew 
richer and deeper to him. He per- 
formed a humble duty, believing in 
his divine origin and his divine 
destiny. He resisted subtle tempta- 
tion, believing in better things than 
bread, and in loyalty rather than 
compromise. He held a perfectly 
straight course, in kindness, mercy, 
love, and truth, just as any man 
of us may and should, "knowing 
64 



LETTERS TO MEN 

whence he came and whither he 
went." And God was about his 
path because he walked in duty, 
fidelity, and loving trust. Eternity 
was in his life because even in time 
his life was in eternity and always 
full of the powers of the world to 
come. 

He lived in a believing age, ac- 
cepting some and rejecting others of 
the beliefs current about him. And 
ever the task has been to keep 
clear the beliefs of Jesus and to 
prevent a crust from forming about 
them. That is why I am asking 
you men to reread any one of the 
Gospels, or all of them, just to see 
in a fresh, living way what he did 
believe and how it showed itself. 
At the risk of being tiresome I re- 
peat again that I am asking you to 
look, not at the beliefs he taught us 
to hold, but at those he held him- 

65 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

self, those he lived by and died for. 
Will you do it? I cannot doubt the 
effect upon your own beliefs if you 
will. I cannot doubt the effect upon 
any man who, in this sane and in- 
telligent fashion, begins to ' 'dream 
Christ's dream," to believe his be- 
liefs, to take up his harp of life and 
strike its chords, to live, as he did, 
the heavenly life upon earth, the 
eternal life in time. This practice 
of Jesus is only one of a thousand 
possible practices, his way only one 
of a thousand possible ways. You 
can follow this practice and walk in 
this way or not, just as you choose. 
There is no way to force you into it. 
There is no disposition to do so. 
There is no better practice or way 
known to us men. History and 
biography show nothing superior. 
And I do not hesitate to say to you, 
as one man to other men, that if 
66 



LETTERS TO MEN 

you will believe these beliefs, prac- 
tice these practices, walk in this 
way of Jesus, men will take knowl- 
edge of you that you have been 
with Jesus and have learned from 
him how to live. And I know of 
nothing better than this that life 
has to offer to men like us. 

It seems a far cry from the Medi- 
terranean Sea on which I wrote you 
my first letter. We were nearer 
then to what is known as the Holy 
Land than we are now. But really 
Jesus and his truth, his life, his be- 
liefs, seem nearer to-day than on 
that other day. And I am wonder- 
ing if we cannot unite with him to 
make this and every land a holy 
land. What do you say? 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



67 



A MAN'S RELIGION 



LETTER V 
A Man's Relations 

Dear Brethren: One of the older 
definitions of religion ran like this: 
"Religion is the relation between a 
worshiped being and a worshiper, 
or between God and man." This 
throws the whole stress of religion 
upon the one idea of relations. And 
there is so much truth in this idea 
that for many people it seems en- 
tirely adequate. For them the 
primary act of religion is expressed 
in the words, "Get right with God," 
and its fundamental test the ques- 
tion of losing or keeping their rela- 
tions with God. On this theory 
worship of God is the essence of 
religion, and receiving blessing from 
him the benefit of it. 

Now, you will remember a word 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

in one of the earlier letters which 
said that "we must enlarge our 
definitions if we are to keep them." 
This definition, it seems to me, must 
be enlarged and vitalized and hu- 
manized. And our relations to God 
will not be narrowed but enriched 
by the process. 

Personally, I think this as fas- 
cinating a topic as we shall have to 
discuss together. It takes the whole 
matter entirely out of the abstract 
and puts it into the concrete and 
personal in a way that makes one's 
blood run fast. I like the things 
that keep religion personal. The 
emphasis of religion and education 
should always be laid upon per- 
sonality. In education teachers 
should regard themselves chiefly as 
teachers of persons rather than 
teachers of subjects. You remem- 
ber how a wise, experienced man 

6 9 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

once said, "The master and the 
fellows are the best part of a college 
course.' ' One of the most whole- 
some men I ever knew often said 
to his friends, "I would rather ac- 
quire a new friend than a new farm, 
and would rather form a new friend- 
ship than a new faith/ ' Perhaps 
these are exaggerations; but if so, 
they are exaggerations of a real 
truth, for, after all, persons are 
the most important things in the 
world, and the question of personal 
relations the most significant ques- 
tion. 

The Bible makes very much of 
men's personal relations with God 
and with one another. All the terms 
that can suggest and define these 
relations are used. The men who 
wrote that great Book never seemed 
to think that they could express all 
that God and men might be to one 
70 



LETTERS TO MEN 

another in a single term, however 
large. We have a rather persistent 
tendency to the use of catch words. 
Limited phrases are easily quoted 
and, consequently, become very 
popular; or single phases of a pro- 
found truth appeal to us, and we 
exclude all the rest. I know certain 
men who have a distinct preference 
for one beatitude over the others, 
and who even like some of the com- 
mandments better than the others. 
It is neither a good principle nor a 
wholesome practice. In this matter 
of relations with God "all things are 
yours/' We are not shut up to the 
use of a single term nor to a partial 
idea under any of the noble names 
for God and thoughts of our rela- 
tions to him. We can easily recall, 
for instance, when certain eminent 
men were proclaiming the doctrine 
of the Fatherhood of God with all 
7i 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

the zeal of a new discovery. And 
many of them were interpreting the 
truth of God's Fatherhood in a 
wholly narrow and meager way. 
They were in a natural reaction 
against certain older and less attrac- 
tive conceptions of God. But a soft 
God is not much more attractive 
than a hard God. And men like 
you feel this to be so. Once, when 
we were going out of church after 
a soft sermon on the Fatherhood of 
God, I heard a keen, kind man 
say to his neighbor: "I hardly think 
God is as easy as that. That kind of 
a father would not do very well in 
bringing up a family of children." 
You see, no idea of God is a com- 
plete idea when standing alone. 
Life's relations and demands are 
rich and manifold. We and our 
friends, we and our children, must 
be many things to each other. God 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

and ourselves must be many things 
to each other. 

You remember the man who was 
quoted so freely in one or two earlier 
letters. Before writing this letter I 
thought it wise to ask him what he 
thought about this subject. He did 
not reply at once, but several days 
afterward he handed me a written 
statement, with the words: "This is 
the best I can do to-day. It is 
better than I could have done a 
year ago, but not as well as I shall 
be able to do a year from now." 
He meant, of course, that the rela- 
tions between God and himself had 
not reached a fixed or final stage, 
but were living and growing. This 
is his statement: "I think of God 
in more than one way. I am obliged 
to use all the rich names the Bible 
gives him. Sometimes one of them 
seems best, sometimes another. 
73 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

They are not mutually exclusive. I 
think of him as my Creator, and it 
makes my life seem sacred to me to 
think that it came from him. I 
must not abuse or regard lightly 
what he has made. He has real and 
large rights in me because he is my 
Creator. The world I live in is his 
world, and I must live in it and use 
it as his. I think of him as my 
Lord and Ruler. He does not seem 
to me a tyrant or a despot. His re- 
lation seems to me something more, 
not something less, than a Father's 
relation. I am his child, but I am 
also a member of his kingdom. 
These things are not contradictory 
unless I get them out of balance. 
He is my Father and I am his son. 
I trust that I am a well-beloved son. 
All that lies in that relation belongs 
to me, and if he thinks of his chil- 
dren as I think of mine, all that lies 

74 



LETTERS TO MEN 

in that relation belongs to him also. 
And I like the word that describes 
Abraham as the friend of God. I 
like to think of myself in that re- 
lation. Friendship is necessary to 
life, and I prize the friendship of 
God beyond all others. I have read 
that after Matthew Arnold's death 
one of his friends said, 'Poor Arnold, 
he will not like God/ And I was 
sorry for Arnold. I think a man 
who simply obeys, or trusts, or 
religiously loves God has missed 
something. I like him, and I like 
to be with him, and I like the things 
he likes. 

"So, as you see, I use all the terms, 
and they all mean something to me. 
But they do not mean the same 
thing all the time. My children are 
always my children, and I am al- 
ways their father, but that does 
not mean the same thing two days 
75 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

in succession. Sometimes I am 
anxious about them, sometimes un- 
happy over them, sometimes I am 
wholly glad and pleased in them. 
Sometimes I vex and displease them, 
and sometimes I please them. I am 
not always wise, and sometimes they 
think me unwise when I am not. 
But our relation is permanent, and 
love never ceases. Now, my heav- 
enly Father is always my Father and 
I am always his son. And I do not 
doubt that sometimes he is anxious 
and unhappy about me. I give him 
concern, I know. Sometimes, most 
of the time, I hope he is 'glad of me/ 
He displeases me sometimes, be- 
cause I like my way better than his 
at times. But I have learned that 
he is always wise. I know that he 
always loves me, and I am glad that 
he is firm and steady with me. He 
is the kind of a Father I ought to 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

have, and I hope at last to be the 
kind of a son he ought to have. 
He had one Son once who was all 
right all the time. He deserves a 
lot more, and I want to be one of 
them. 

"My children have changed rela- 
tion to me since they were babies. 
They have become companions and 
friends and sharers of all my life 
interests. I remember reading once 
that Victor Hugo said that 'heaven 
is the place where the children are 
always little and the parents are 
always young/ That does not seem 
to have sense in it. My son is now 
forty, and I am sixty-five. I was a 
proud father when he was born, but 
not half as proud or pleased as now 
when I see him doing a big man's 
work in the world. It was not half 
so fine to wheel him in a baby car- 
riage in his weakness as it is to 
77 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

stand up beside him and feel his 
strength. Of course, he calls me 
'Dad' and I call him 'Boy/ but 
there are two men of us now, and 
my life is richer because he is a 
man. We mean a lot more to one 
another than we did forty, or even 
twenty, years ago. I hope that 
is true as between God and my- 
self. 

"I tell my plans to my son and 
we work together. This confidence 
between us has grown through the 
years. I sometimes think this may 
have been what Jesus had in mind 
when he said, 'A servant knoweth 
not what his Lord doeth,' and that 
he meant something like the rela- 
tion between my boy and me when 
he said, 'Henceforth I call you 
friends.' I like that term. My 
son and I spend much time together. 
We work at the same things. We 

78 



LETTERS TO MEN 

care for the same people. We do 
not let our relation drift or suffer 
from neglect. I have seen too many 
friends drift apart in my time. 

"So — I speak reverently — I spend 
as much time with my heavenly 
Father as possible. My son said a 
lovely thing about me to an old 
friend of mine. He said, 'The more 
you are with my father, and the 
better you know him, the more you 
love him and want to be with him.' 
Well, call it what you will, com- 
munion with God, fellowship with 
God, friendship with God, or know- 
ing God, the more you are with him, 
and the better 3 t ou know him, the 
more you love him and want to be 
with him. So I use all the good 
names to call him by, and our rela- 
tion is very rich and varied. He 
touches my life at many points, and 
always does it good. I would not 
79 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

know what to do with myself or with 
my life if it were not for these rela- 
tions with him. They get better 
and better, as such relations always 
should. And I keep saying of this 
relation, as of some other, 'The 
best is yet to be/ 

"I think I ought to add that I 
love God with my mind much more 
than I used to. He always had my 
heart and its affection, but now he 
has the whole love of my whole 
being. Perhaps this was not quite 
what you wanted me to say, but 
it nearly tells what I think to-day. 
Next year I shall have a better 
story to tell." 

Not much needs to be added to 
that statement. Still, there is a 
word, a practical word. These let- 
ters are not written as doctrinal 
studies, but as practical life studies. 
So I think the establishment and 
80 



LETTERS TO MEN 

maintenance of right relations with 
God the next steps after any defi- 
nition of the relations between man 
and him. There is a real truth in 
the familiar words, "Get right with 
God." Eliminate all the cant that 
grows around such a phrase and 
there is still a large meaning 
left. I have spoken of God as our 
Creator, our Lord and Master, our 
Father, and our Friend. But the 
law of relations is reciprocal. And 
all these terms put upon us pretty 
serious requirements. He is always 
a perfect Creator, a true Lord and 
Master, a wise and loving Father, 
and a good, firm Friend. But these 
reciprocal relations cannot exist if we 
men are not constantly answering 
back to him in a right response. 
These letters are really intended to 
be very practical. I do not hesitate, 
then, to ask whether, in all these 
81 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

particulars, you are in right rela- 
tions with God. Do you, for ex- 
ample, know citizenship in his 
kingdom, sonship in his family, and 
friendship with him as an experience 
rather than as a doctrine? If there 
is anything wrong or imperfect in 
your relation, he is not to blame 
for it. The clouds that hide him 
are earth-born. Will you clear them 
away as far as you can? The way 
back to perfect relations is the way 
of Jesus Christ. Will you take 
it? 

And will you cultivate these rela- 
tions? Jowett wrote to Stanley: "I 
earnestly hope that the friendship 
which commenced between us many 
years ago may be a blessing to last 
us through life. I feel that if it is 
to be so, we must both go onward, 
otherwise the tear and wear of life, 
and the 'having traveled over each 
82 



LETTERS TO MEN 

other's minds, and a thousand ac- 
cidents will be sufficient to break it 
off." 

Somehow, the relation gets pretty 
thin unless it has attention. Some 
men never get beyond the wonder 
of their introduction to other men 
or their first experience with God. 
And friendship does not survive 
when there is nothing in it except 
a perpetual going over of that first 
meeting. Our relation ought to be 
better than that, but in order to be 
better we must give attention to it. 
A neglected friendship with man or 
God comes to grief. A thin and 
shallow personality is incapable of 
the deepest things in personal rela- 
tionships. Dr. King quotes from 
Phillips Brooks these words: "Surely 
there is no more beautiful sight to 
see in all this world — full as it is of 
beautiful adjustments and mutual 

83 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

ministrations — than the growth of 
two friends' natures who, as they 
grow old together, are always fath- 
oming with newer needs deeper 
depths of each other's life, and open- 
ing richer veins of one another's 
helpfulness. And this best culture 
of personal friendship is taken up 
and made in its infinite completion 
the gospel method of the progres- 
sive saving of the soul by Christ." 

In this light how rich certain fa- 
miliar expressions become: "And 
Abraham was called the friend of 
God"; "Henceforth I call you no 
more servants but friends"; :: Now 
are we the sons of God, and it doth 
not yet appear what we shall be, but 
we know that when he shall appear 
we shall be like him, for we shall 
see him as he is"; "And if children, 
then heirs, heirs of God and joint 
heirs with Jesus Christ." 
84 



LETTERS TO MEN 

This is among the things religion 
offers to a man. It offers much be- 
sides this. But this is enough to 
make any man rich. 

Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



85 



A MAN'S RELIGION 



LETTER VI 
His Human Relations 

Dear Brethren: It seems al- 
most strange that in the older 
definitions of religion the stress 
should have been so largely laid 
upon one side of it. Cardinal New- 
man's words are in line with almost 
universal usage: "By religion I mean 
the knowledge of God, of his will, 
and our duties toward him." Mar- 
tineau put it thus: "By religion I 
mean the belief in and worship of 
Supreme Mind and Will directing 
the universe and holding moral re- 
lations with human life." 

Now, it is not hard to see two 
things as one looks at those defini- 
tions: first, that they take no suffi- 
cient account of a man's human 
relations; and, second, that their 
86 



LETTERS TO MEN 

sure tendency must be to make re- 
ligion a thing of worship, ceremonial, 
ritual, and doctrine. If this the- 
ory be emphasized and developed, 
human relations become less and 
less sacred and religious rites grow 
from more to more. In point of 
fact, this is exactly the history of 
this one-sided idea and its develop- 
ment in experience. One need not 
go outside the familiar history of 
the Hebrews to see the universal 
trend or tendency of religion to be- 
come one-sided. And the reaction 
of the prophets in Judaism showed 
the tendency of every reaction. But 
things had reached such a pass that 
a reaction had to be violent in order 
to be effective. If a strong man 
stole a poor man's farm, or robbed a 
widow, or defrauded an orphan, or 
committed any other offense against 
his neighbor or his tribe, he believed 

87 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

that he could make it all right with 
God by elaborate ceremony of sacri- 
fice, burning of beasts and incense, 
and performance of stately ritual in 
the temple. And it was not thought 
necessary that he should make it 
right with men. And the prophets 
broke out against this wicked idea 
with a wrath that seems to make all 
modern religious anger seem mild 
and gentle. The early words in 
Isaiah are so severe that if a modern 
preacher should use them concern- 
ing his congregation he would be 
told to ' 'preach the simple gospel." 
They are interesting reading, how- 
ever, this very year: "I have had 
enough of the burnt-offerings of 
rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; I am 
weary of blood and incense and I 
hate your processions and tramping 
around the temple/ ' "And when ye 
spread forth your hands, I will hide 
88 



LETTERS TO MEN 

mine eyes from you; yea, when ye 
make many prayers, I will not hear: 
your hands are full of blood. Wash 
you, make you clean; put away the 
evil of your doings from before mine 
eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do 
well; seek justice, relieve the op- 
pressed, judge the fatherless, plead 
for the widow/ ' (Tsa. I. 15-17.) 

Jesus liked what Hosea said: "I 
desire goodness and not sacrifice." 
So on the quotations might go. 
They all illustrate or emphasize the 
same thing, namely, that God is 
ever seeking obedience, righteous- 
ness, love, mercy, kindness, justice 
between men and reverence toward 
himself. He has ever been trying 
to put the force of religious worship 
behind religious work, the life gen- 
erated by contact with him into 
conduct toward men. We need not 
use figures, but we can easily appre- 

89 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

ciate Arnold's statement that life is 
three fourths conduct. 

I think no one can read the 
prophets or the Gospels without 
feeling that religion is vastly more 
than the relation between God and 
man, and that worship is not reli- 
gion's full expression or its most 
significant act. The definition of re- 
ligion tremendously needs enlarge- 
ment so as to include these human 
relations and activities. It must 
take equal account of worship and 
work, of the Fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man, paying 
vows and paying debts, being pious 
and being kind. A keen living 
preacher once said, "God and one 
man might make any other reli- 
gion, but it takes God and two 
men to make Christianity." That 
is clever and epigrammatic, but not 
quite true. It takes God and two 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

men to make any real religion. In 
other words, religion is a thing of 
human relations as well as divine 
relations, and a man is not truly and 
wholly a religious man until he is 
religious in all his relations. 

One of the easy shibboleths of 
religion is expressed in the familiar 
and wholesome words, "Get right 
with God," and this is often fol- 
lowed with the statement that if a 
man gets right with God, he will be 
right with men. But many men 
make an effort, resort to a process 
to get right with God, and leave the 
other to inference. Getting right 
with men by inference is very much 
easier than doing it in fact. Re- 
pentance toward God is not actually 
complete until there is also restitu- 
tion toward man. It is lots easier 
to invite the Saviour home to dinner 
than to restore fourfold to those 

9i 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

whom a man has wronged in trade 
or otherwise. The business of get- 
ting right with men is a real busi- 
ness and not an inference. It 
requires care and attention. Some- 
times it requires pain and effort. 
But there is no other way to make a 
religious life moral than to bring 
into all relations the sanctity that 
we seek in our relations with God. 

There has been a long and pain- 
ful separation in both speech and 
thought between religion and 
morals. Religious speech has not 
infrequently spoken contemptuously 
of mere morals. The ethical life has 
been thought of as a thing apart or, 
again, as a matter of inference. And 
there have been many merry gibes 
each way, all of them wrong and all 
of them unhappy. The sanest 
teacher the world has known put 
the two relations together and for- 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

ever repudiated that false and fatal 
distinction between religion and 
ethics in practical life. 

A great modern writer has defined 
Christian ethics in these words: 
"Christian ethics is the science of 
living well with one another ac- 
cording to Christ.' ' That sentence 
will bear analysis and elaboration. 
"Christian ethics is the science of 
living" — that makes it vital, a thing 
not simply of logic, but of life. It 
is "the science of living well"— 
that gives it dignity, and character, 
and nobility, and lifts it above all 
low levels to a high personal plane. 
One can easily understand the 
strength of this as an appeal to a 
man desiring to be strong and fine 
in personal character and conduct. 
It is "the science of living well with 
one another" — and that ties per- 
sonal relations up with personal 
93 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

excellence and makes this science of 
noble living cover not only the man 
himself but the man among men, 
not only his character but his friend- 
ships and his enmities, the whole 
vast, complicated scheme of his 
human relationships. It is "the 
science of living weir' — that is nobly 
— "with one another" — that is so- 
cially and humanly — "according to 
Christ"; and when you pronounce 
that word you lift the whole subject 
into the region where all false dis- 
tinctions between ethics and reli- 
gion vanish in the presence of his 
life which made no such distinctions. 
It was all religious and all moral 
with him and should be with us 
men. His relations with God and 
men, with the heavenly Father and 
the trying fisherman, were all of 
one piece. His obedience and his 
prayers, his philanthropy and his 

94 



LETTERS TO MEN 

communion, all struck the same 
note. He knew "no life divided,' ' 
and he never raised that foolish 
question about men being religious 
without being moral, just as he 
never discredited or despised "mere 
morality." 

I am writing to poor purpose un- 
less I am making clear to other men 
that the essence of religion covers a 
lot of vital matters as it covers all 
the relations, divine and human, 
which we sustain. I wish I could 
make clear also that there is danger 
here of a professional element. Some 
men are professionally religious and 
some are professionally human. One 
set becomes priests and the other 
philanthropists or social workers — 
all of a certain type. Some men are 
chiefly interested in the doctrinal, 
others in the liturgical, others in the 
social side of religion. Some men 
95 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

seem almost afraid to become in- 
terested in the social phases of reli- 
gion lest they may become social 
reformers or specialists in the mat- 
ter of relations between classes. I 
am not trying to promote any ex- 
clusive type of religion. I am think- 
ing of religion, not as a technically 
social question involving some of the 
strained relations of the world, but 
as a broadly, genuinely human mat- 
ter involving all human relations. I 
do not ask whether you are a philan- 
thropist or a social reformer, but 
whether you are a human man, 
human in all your relations with 
God and other men. This means 
much more than the question of re- 
lations between employers and em- 
ployees, for instance, as it means 
more than being in a fight for a 
clean town. It means having the 
spirit of Jesus Christ in all our 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

human relations with men, women, 
and children. In one phase of it, 
it means the application of the 
Golden Rule as a matter of constant 
practice, but really that does not 
cover the whole case. It means the 
practice of the law of love and 
friendship and truth and kindness 
and righteousness even as Jesus did. 
Take the matter of kindness, for 
example. You remember Robert 
Louis Stevenson's fine word: "Let 
us be a little kinder than is neces- 
sary.' ' That puts a bloom, a re- 
ligious bloom, upon the most beau- 
tiful practice of life. Christianity 
has been called a religion for men 
of good will for good will among 
men. 

You see what I am trying to say. 

I wish you could see how anxious I 

am to say it right. Last month we 

were thinking of our total relations 

97 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

with God. How rich and varied 
they are! This month and here- 
after we are called to think as men 
of religion of our relations with 
other men. The relation to God 
does not cease. He seems a better 
and dearer Father because he is 
the Father of my brother as well as 
myself. And my brother is vastly 
dearer because we are both in the 
love of our Father. Each relation 
enriches the other. Friendship with 
God is immeasurably more precious 
because of my human friendships, 
and they are lifted away above all 
common levels by his friendship for 
and with us all. 

You remember that in discussing 
our relations with God I said that 
more than one word is required to 
indicate their wealth and scope. 
We are his children, his friends, his 
servants. He is our Creator, our 

9 8 



LETTERS TO MEN 

Ruler, our Father, our Friend, and 
very much besides. So in describ- 
ing our relations to one another, the 
relations of man to man, man to 
society, we are obliged to use sev- 
eral words. We are friends of man- 
kind, we are brothers, we are 
neighbors, we are servants, we are 
leaders, we are followers, we are 
companions — how the list might be 
extended! Human relations are so 
rich and manifold, and religion per- 
meates them all. They are all to be 
held and sustained and enriched by 
the religious spirit and principle. 
Something more than just good feel- 
ing toward men is called for by our 
relations. Our relations are not 
truly met simply by right senti- 
ments toward some men, even by 
right sentiments toward the un- 
fortunate or needy. Nothing short 
of right character in all these rela- 

99 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

tions will meet life's true demands. 
"This is the office of a friend to 
make us do what we can," says 
Emerson with deep truth. In the 
fair, fine partnership with God each 
of us brings the best he has to the 
relation. Neither withholds any- 
thing that is good. He keeps noth- 
ing back from us, we keep nothing 
back from him. So in this fair, fine 
relation between us as men, we 
must bring to it the best we have. 
President King asks and answers a 
vital question thus: 

"And, first, what must be the 
basis of any true friendship, human 
or divine? How is an ideal rela- 
tionship between two persons to 
be established? What are the pre- 
requisites? 

"So far as I can see, the basis 
must be fourfold: integrity, breadth, 
and depth of personality; some deep 
ioo 



LETTERS TO MEN 

community of interests; mutual self- 
revelation and answering trust; and 
mutual self -giving/ ' 

You see what kind of men we are 
required to be just because there 
are other men and we are related to 
them. We have to be at our best 
not only because we are sons of our 
Father, but because we are brothers 
of our brothers, friends of our friends, 
and companions of our companions. 

I wonder if you will be willing to 
take the Beatitudes of our Master, 
our Elder Brother, and Saint Paul's 
chapter on love, and saturate your 
whole scheme of human relations 
with them: your friendships, your 
likes, your dislikes, your neighborli- 
ness, your trade and political rela- 
tions, your club life, and all the rest. 
Will you agree to these simple com- 
ments on some of Saint Paul's 
words? "Love is not covetous, for 
101 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

it would scorn to profit by another's 
loss." "Love will not kill either 
suddenly with a sword or slowly by 
unkindness, for love gives and en- 
hances life." "Love will not steal, 
either goods from the counter, 
money from the purse, value from 
the stock, or time from an em- 
ployer." "Love will not be proud, 
for the weakness of another is a 
sorrow as keen as though that 
weakness were our own." 

I am thinking about our making 
all our human relations religious and 
not simply those relations that seem 
to be held in the church. I notice 
a lot of men calling other men 
"brother" these days. A hotel clerk 
greeted a dozen assorted travelers all 
alike the other night, "Good evening, 
brother." We all liked it, especially 
when he did his best to treat us as 
though we had come home. 

102 



LETTERS TO MEN 

Religion has been made rather too 
special and occasional. We used to 
think that a life protected by special 
providence was signally favored, and 
the more special the providence the 
more valuable it seemed. All that 
now seems a mistake. We test the 
value of God's good care, not by 
its occasionalism, but by its con- 
stancy and steadiness. God is our 
Father and Friend and everything 
else that is good all the time. And I 
think we men ought to be his sons, 
his friends, his followers all the 
time, in all of our lives. And you 
agree, do you not, that the spirit 
of this relation should not be occa- 
sional, but constant in all those 
human relations which make the 
best part of the earthly life? It 
would make a new world for us to 
have all our common relations thus 
sanctified and transformed, and the 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

new world would be worth liv- 
ing in. 

"And one of them, a lawyer, asked 
him a question, trying him: Teacher, 
which is the great commandment in 
the law? And he said unto him, 
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. This 
is the great and first commandment. 
And a second like unto it is this, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. On these two command- 
ments the whole law hangeth, and 
the prophets' ' (Matt. 22. 35-40). 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



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LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER VII 

A Man's Character 

Dear Brethren: We are all fa- 
miliar with the common saying, 
"Character is what a man really is, 
reputation what people think he is." 
And it is somewhat carelessly as- 
sumed that only character is im- 
portant. Some of you also remem- 
ber reading in the "Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table" the statement that 
in every dialogue betw r een John and 
Thomas there are at least six dis- 
tinct personalities: 



Three Johns 



i. The real John known only to 
his Maker. 

2. John's ideal John. 

3. Thomas's ideal John. 



fi. The real Thomas. 
Three Thomases^' 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 
[3. John's ideal Thomas. 

105 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

Long after Dr. Holmes made that 
analysis, Dr. James Stalker deliv- 
ered his noble address on "The Four 
Men." He said: "You might say 
that in every man there are four 
men: i. The man the world sees. 
2. The man seen by the person who 
knows him best. 3. The man seen 
by himself. 4. The man whom God 
sees." The idea, as you see, was not 
original with Dr. Stalker, and prob- 
ably not with the Autocrat, but 
each used the idea wisely, and that 
is about as good as to have origi- 
nated it. 

And each of these three men of 
Holmes and four men of Stalker is 
important. The discussion brings us 
right up to the question as to the 
kind of man any man really is. And 
for religion, and for a man, there is 
nothing more vital and fundamental 
than that. For the question of indi- 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

vidual character is primary, even in 
the days of social Christianity. "At 
every point the social question 
drives one back to the antecedent 
question of character." Every re- 
ligion must be tested by its ideals 
of character, its power to produce 
character, and its results in the way 
of character. The tests must be 
living, and not academic, but they 
must be strict and thorough. Espe- 
cially must they take account of the 
poor human material out of which 
character is to be made. 

Character, like everything else, is 
affected by all the forces that work 
upon it and produce it. The Chris- 
tian character is the resultant of 
the perfect influences and ideals of 
Christianity and the imperfect hu- 
man nature upon which these ideals 
and forces operate. 

It would be easy to become meta- 
107 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

physical or theological in the dis- 
cussion of this subject, and that 
would be all wrong. I suppose if 
you had had a chance to tell me 
your wishes as to this matter, you 
would have said something like this: 
"Tell us as plainly as possible what 
character is. You need not give us 
a definition, but only such a state- 
ment as will make it fairly clear. 
Then tell us how to get it, and how 
to keep it, and how to develop it." 
Of course, you would not ask how 
to lose it, because losing character 
is not religion, and therefore not 
part of our theme. I shall assume 
that you have asked me just these 
very positive questions, and I shall 
try to indicate at least the ways 
along which the answers lie. 

And the very first thing that 
strikes us is the clear conviction 
that character is neither some vague 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

thing, nor some perfectly simple 
thing. It is quite concrete and 
rather complex. Anyhow, it does 
not consist of a solitary quality, 
whether that quality be a virtue or 
a vice. We must be careful not to 
overwork the demand for simplicity. 
In another place I have ventured to 
say that ' 'personality is not simply 
a list of qualities, however noble and 
admirable. Character is something 
more than characteristics/ ' And yet 
character has to do with characteris- 
tics and qualities, and we cannot 
ignore the lists. A brilliant, living 
preacher has named the characteris- 
tics of Jesus as follows: ''Strength, 
sincerity, reasonableness, poise, orig- 
inality, narrowness, breadth, trust, 
brotherliness, optimism, chivalry, 
firmness, generosity, candor, enthu- 
siasm, gladness, humility, patience, 
courage, indignation, reverence, holi- 
109 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

ness, and greatness/ ' Long ago 
Bushnell, in his study of Jesus, did 
something of the same sort. 

Before leaving this list, or saying 
anything about it, I might as well 
copy here one or two other similar 
lists not as applied to Jesus. A 
man, writing a letter on religion 
many centuries ago, said this won- 
derful thing:" "The fruit produced by 
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
forbearance , kindliness , generosity, 
trustfulness self -control/ ' And 
another man of the same race, also 
writing a letter on religion long ago, 
used these wonderful words: "Do 
your best to supplement your faith 
by goodness, goodness by knowledge, 
knowledge by self-control, self-con- 
trol by endurance, endurance by 
piety, piety by brotherly affection, 
brotherly affection by love." A 
modern man has named the follow- 
no 



LETTERS TO MEN 

ing as the ' 'Marks of a Man": 
1 'Truth, Purity, Service, Freedom, 
Progress, and Patience/ ' These lists 
might be extended and other lists 
might easily be made, but that is 
not necessary. These qualities, as 
you see, are all the qualities of good 
men, not bad ones. 

Now, character is clearly not any 
one of these noble qualities alone, 
not even the best and largest of 
them. I suppose you will agree with 
me that these virtues ought all to 
be in us and abound, and that we 
should be men of high character if 
they did. I cannot see how to omit 
any of them. Can you? I would 
not count it an improvement to 
Jesus or any of us to lack any of 
these qualities. It seems to me 
that he stands so alone in the world 
just because he had so many of 
these noble and indispensable char- 
iii 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

acteristics, in such perfect balance 
and living unity that, taken to- 
gether, they make a perfect charac- 
ter, all of one piece, like his seamless 
robe. And I judge that the test of 
a man's character is its likeness, or 
unlikeness, to this character of Jesus 
when measured by these perfectly 
admirable and necessary qualities. 
Perhaps, as nearly as anything can 
describe it, this tells us what char- 
acter is: The qualities, characteris- 
tics, and virtues essential to perfect 
or highest manhood, held in perfect 
proportion and balance, and in liv- 
ing vital unity. Maybe it was 
something like this that James Mar- 
tineau meant when he said, " Jesus 
Christ shows us in living definition 
what a Christian ought to be." He 
is the definition of manhood, life, 
and character. Having this sort of 
character is simply sharing the life 

112 



LETTERS TO MEN 

and character of God. These are 
the qualities that are in him. These 
are the divine traits that Jesus re- 
vealed. To this sort of character 
Jesus came to save us men and all 
men. This, surely, is the one thing 
in the world best worth getting. 

It is not easy to press this point 
without saying more than I have 
space to say as to wealth of charac- 
ter. How rich it seems when viewed 
in this light! How rich it is when 
these qualities abound! So many 
characters are so meager, so poor, 
so barren. This is not simplicity of 
character, it is simple and unlovely 
poverty of character. But we men 
were made for wealth and abun- 
dance in this regard. It is a shame 
to be paupers when in the realm of 
character we should be princes of 
the kingdom. 

How can a man, any man, acquire 

"3 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

or achieve a character such as he 
should have? No normal man is 
wholly destitute of excellence, no 
matter how imperfect his character 
is. Now, how can a man become a 
better man? The getting of a right 
character, the developing of a true 
and well-rounded character, the 
achieving of a sound and Christlike 
character — no matter which phrase 
you use, it all means the same thing. 
How can a man become a good man 
and always a better man until he 
reaches full-sized manhood, or the 
perfect stature of a man in Christ? 
Suppose you sit down with these 
lists of noble . qualities before you 
and take account of stock, personal 
stock. How does your own character 
bear these tests or measurements? 
Is it suffering atrophy or obesity at 
any points? Does it need develop- 
ment or reduction at any places? 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

Here is the place for one of those 
fine, deep contradictions in human 
life, hard to put in a statement, 
but easily understood in experience. 
There can be no character achieved 
without God, and God cannot do it 
without a man helping. It is all of 
God, it is all of man. We must 
work at it as if we had it all to do; 
we must trust God, knowing that 
without him we can do nothing. A 
lad at a camp meeting overheard a 
man in an adjoining tent groaning 
and praying as if in agony. The boy 
said to his mother, "What is the 
matter with the man?" The mother 
answered, "He wants to be a better 
man." And the lad quickly asked, 
"Why don't he be, then?" One 
must cease to do evil as if one, by 
ceasing, could instantly and com- 
pletely be rid of evil. One must 
cast his burden of evil upon the 

115 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

Lord, knowing that he alone can 
take it away. One must learn to do 
well, to practice all these high and 
holy virtues with personal fidelity 
and devotion as if this alone were 
the way of character. One must 
trust Christ with an assurance that 
never flickers, that he alone is ade- 
quate to the creation and develop- 
ment of character. A child, trying 
to state it, said: "We must do most 
of the work ourselves, and God will 
do just that little bit that we cannot 
just manage, the little bit at the 
end. Any more help than that 
would be spoilings." 

I know of no way to develop hon- 
esty of character except by the 
strict and constant practice of hon- 
esty and by an honest, square life 
with the God of honesty. Grace is 
not magical, but rational in its 
operations. I know of no way to 
116 



LETTERS TO MEN 

develop kindness except by the life 
of kindness. Living the life of a 
coward does not increase courage. 
The constant practice of noble quali- 
ties increases and strengthens those 
very qualities in us. 

Association with the best helps 
mightily. "Live with wolves and 
you learn to howl." It works the 
other way just as well. A man's 
outreach in the effort to measure 
up to worthy companions enlarges 
the man's own manhood. Health is 
contagious. " Character is caught, 
not taught." Long ago, for the 
space of three years, a dozen men 
lived together with one named Jesus. 
The dozen were just ordinary men, 
no better and no abler than many 
who are reading this letter. The 
holy apostles were altogether human. 
Some of them seem like blood rela- 
tions of mine. But that great Com- 
117 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

panion of theirs had an incalculable 
upward pull on their lives. Or, to 
put it another way, the more they 
lived with him the more they be- 
came like him and wanted to be. 
One of the finest sentences in bio- 
graphical literature is this: "Men 
took knowledge of them that they 
had been with Jesus and learned of 
him." Do not miss the point as to 
what they learned. They learned 
how to get away from badness and 
littleness into goodness and large- 
ness; they learned the ways of life, 
how to rid life of evil, how to keep 
it from evil, and how to keep it 
clean and strong and useful. They 
saw him do it and they learned from 
him how. He was the master -of 
living, of character-making in him- 
self and other men. I do not know 
any better way yet than to live with 
him and to live like him, to submit 
118 



LETTERS TO MEN 

yourselves wholly to his influence 
and to his ideals. A living writer has 
said: " Character is defined in the 
commandments as a goodness which 
consists in obedience to the laws. 
. . . Character is defined in the 
Beatitudes as a goodness which con- 
sists in the endeavor to attain 
ideals/ ' 

I have only a few lines more in 
which to tell you that character is 
not for any of us to-day a com- 
pleted and finished thing. Our 
manifest imperfections are not to 
crush us into despair, if we are stead- 
ily faring forward, "working upward, 
working out the beast/ ' Character 
is not static, but living. A living 
man is not a rock, he is a tree, or, 
what is far better, a living soul. An 
old lake captain once said in my 
hearing: "We are working away at 
me, God and myself, and we will get 
119 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

our job done by the end of the day. 
It is not done yet, but it is farther 
along than yesterday." Maybe I 
ought to have said earlier that char- 
acter is what you are becoming 
rather than what you are. There is 
an enlarging and ripening experience 
in life and character. One of our 
greatest bishops once said to a friend 
in an hour of intimate talk: "God 
has not had an easy time making 
me what he wants me to be, but I 
am helping, and he is working his 
will in me. We shall win." 

I keep thinking of those early 
Christian letters on religion. By 
common consent Christianity has 
had no finer character than Saint 
Paul. Do you remember how he 
put it? "I count not myself to have 
apprehended, but I press on." We 
have had no one who knew our 
Master better than did Saint John. 
1 20 



LETTERS TO MEN 

He was thinking of character when 
he wrote, "It doth not yet appear 
what we shall be." Character is far 
from complete, the development so 
imperfect that we cannot even see 
the end — "but we shall be like him." 
Browning wrote : 

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for? 

What a chance there is for us! 
Come to Him. Follow Him. Live 
with Him. Live like Him. And 
some fair day, be like Him. 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



121 



A MAN'S RELIGION 



LETTER VIII 

Keeping Life Right 

Dear Brethren: You may re- 
member that in one or two earlier 
letters in this series an unnamed 
man was quoted at some length. 
Well, to my joy, he has spoken 
again, this time about the main- 
tenance of a religious life. This is 
what he has to say on that very 
important subject: "I was pretty 
well instructed about how to begin 
a religious life and think I did ac- 
tually get into it in about the right 
way. I think, however, that there 
has been rather too much stress 
upon the beginning of the religious 
life and an unwholesome tendency 
to be constantly harking back to the 
gate through which I came, rather 
than making certain that my feet 

122 



LETTERS TO MEN 

are now in the right way and carry- 
ing me safely and steadily in the 
proper direction. The gate was mag- 
nificent, and going through it a most 
thrilling experience, but it is a gate, 
nevertheless, and I cannot satisfy 
myself going through it over and 
over again. I am safely through the 
entrance, now how can I keep on?" 
I am quite persuaded that this 
good man states the case for many 
besides himself. Men really do want 
to know how to keep life from evil 
and how to keep it up to a high level. 
Many men are genuinely discouraged 
over the tendency to sag, to run 
down, which their lives constantly 
reveal. And many others are dis- 
heartened over the frequent defeats 
they sustain in what are really the 
higher realms of their lives. These 
are not idle and speculative matters. 
They are intensely practical. They 
123 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

involve what President King called 
"A Rational Fight for Character/' 
These questions have to do with 
those unhappy hours when a man's 
life gets off the key and loses tone, 
when a man falls away below him- 
self and then loses heart and courage 
over the whole business of being 
religious. 

Now, there are several fundamen- 
tal things to remember all the time. 
I wish I could say them so that you 
would always remember and be 
helped by them. I hesitate to num- 
ber them, or to say, "in the first 
place," for that sounds like preach- 
ing, and I must not preach in these 
letters. But listen to this: Life re- 
quires constant and careful atten- 
tion in order to keep it up to tone, 
to keep it from getting off the key. 
It will sag, to change the figure, 
unless you watch it all the time. 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

This is true of all a man's life, not of 
his religious life alone. The body 
runs down, the mind runs down, 
the soul runs down, the appearance 
runs down, and the man himself 
runs down unless they are all looked 
after. 

Being useful does not keep life 
toned up. I have said elsewhere and 
often that a watch has only one 
business, that is, to keep time; but 
a watch runs down, gets out of 
order, and even wears out while it is 
faithfully doing the very thing for 
which it is made, while faithfully 
doing its duty. And it must be 
wound daily, cleaned and regulated 
regularly, repaired occasionally, 
parts replaced when necessary, and 
the whole watch completely over- 
hauled ever and again. One does 
not discard watches or disregard 
time because of this. He accepts it 

I2S 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

as part of a normal life and does 
what is wise under the circumstances. 

Pianos and organs will get out of 
tune, not only when standing idle or 
being misused, but when being used 
properly for the very purpose for 
which they exist. Life is like them. 
It also gets out of tune and needs 
to be put in the right key again and 
again. A wise man does not refuse 
to have anything to do with organs 
or pianos on this account. He uses 
them and gives them the care they 
require for their highest efficiency. 
For a watch out of order or a piano 
out of tune is intolerable. And at 
any cost a man's life must be kept 
at its best. 

There are really two questions 
here in this fight for character; one, 
the question of keeping life from 
evil, the other keeping it fit and 
strong and growing. Let no man 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

imagine that he alone faces these 
questions. That other man by your 
side there, the one who seems so 
clean and so strong and so exempt, 
has faced and is facing all the while 
these severe problems. No man 
escapes them. In some form or 
other they come to all men. The 
Alan of men went over that same 
road. "He knows what sore temp- 
tation means.' ' The literature of 
biography is alive with this story. 
How to keep life from evil! How 
to keep evil out of life! How to 
meet it and beat it! How to fight 
the good fight, or run the straight 
race! How to overcome and not be 
overcome! It sometimes seems as if 
all life's questions center in this 
group. Stalker, going to address an 
audience of young men, once asked 
a friend what he should speak 
about, and the friend answered: 
127 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

1 'There is only one subject worth 
speaking to young men about, and 
that is temptation/ ' And Stalker 
classifies men around this subject, 
dividing them into these six groups: 
1 'Those who are being tempted; 
those who have fallen before temp- 
tation; those who are tempters of 
others; those who are successfully 
resisting temptation ; those who have 
outlived their temptations; those 
who are assisting others to over- 
come.' ' Where do you stand in 
this classification? 

I cannot in this brief letter do 
more than call urgent attention to 
the need of watching life with all 
diligence in order to keep it from 
evil. It is a matter of life and death. 
Life is like a seamless robe, and evil 
tears it. "Your soul," said the 
mother of Marius the Epicurean, "is 
like the pure white dove which you 
128 






LETTERS TO MEN 

are to carry across the market place 
unsoiled by the soot or dirt of the 
market place/ ' Keeping life from 
evil is not a problem of speculation, 
but of practice. Some men fall 
through their physical condition or 
habits; others through mental prac- 
tices; loose, improper memories; 
loose, dangerous imaginations and 
emotions; loose, weak wills; loose, 
uncontrolled thinking; others fall 
through their associations. It some- 
times seems to men as if the uni- 
verse were built so they could easily 
fall. But it is not. "They that be 
for us are more than they that be 
for them." God's real universe is 
organized, not for man's defeat, but 
for man's victory. The world is al- 
ways Jesus Christ's world, the world 
in which he won his triumphs, in 
which he met evil and kept himself 
free from it. He gave evil no quar- 
129 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

ter. He did not dally with it or 
linger in its company. He ever 
turned his life to the nobler usages 
and practices. He resisted evil al- 
ways with good. He kept himself, 
body, soul, and spirit always at his 
best. He practiced the presence of 
God. He held on his way. You 
can. You can rise if you have fallen. 
You can win though you are now 
beaten. You can prove "the ex- 
pulsive power of a new affection/ ' 
You can apply both resistance and 
counter attraction. Above all, you 
can prove for yourself the value of 
high friendship with the noble as- 
sociation with good and true men, 
and the victorious help of Jesus 
Christ himself. 

I sometimes fear that we create 

upon our own minds the impression 

that the struggle with evil is the 

chief thing. Surely, that cannot be 

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LETTERS TO MEN 

life's largest interest. Defending a 
fort can hardly be the noblest occu- 
pation of an army all the time. So 
the chief concern of life must be the 
maintenance of its fitness and the 
increasing of its efficiency for good. 
I have already spoken of the tend- 
ency life has to sag, to run down, to 
fall below its highest levels. The 
great souls of history have all felt 
this. The biographies of men are 
valuable to us because they show 
us how other men kept their lives 
fit and strong. The life of Jesus is 
most valuable of all. Do not make 
the personal life of Jesus so unlike 
your own as to make it unreal. Do 
not hold it away from your own life 
by one or two removes under the 
false impression that that is espe- 
cially pious and reverent. "The 
kingdom of heaven is like" the 
things we know. The Master used 
131 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

openly all good means to raise and 
keep his life on the highest levels. 
And he did not do it just as a show, 
merely to set us an example. He 
did it because it was worth while 
for him. 

Take the matter of prayer. We 
need it so much and use it so little. 
He seemed to need it so little and 
used it so much. But he prayed 
because prayer was good for him, 
not because it would be good for us. 
See what he said about it. See 
chiefly what he did about it. Prayer 
kept for him the channels of life 
open, the tides of real power flow- 
ing. He prayed because it was good 
for him, because he felt the need of 
it and knew the value of it. I have 
written elsewhere these words: "He 
did not mean to have any low mo- 
ments. He purposed keeping life 
persistently at its highest levels. He 
132 






LETTERS TO MEN 

was determined that his personality 
should project his activity as far as 
possible. The more he had to do, 
the more ready and able he must 
be for the doing of it. Men ought 
always to pray, not because of the 
answers they get in the ordinary 
sense, but because of the power true 
prayer brings into the life of a pray- 
ing man." Jesus is the best exem- 
plification in history of what prayer 
means and what it is worth. 

So with the real use of the Bible as 
a means of keeping life toned up. 
You remember in the very first 
letter my friend said: "If I knew 
a better book, I would use it." 
That tells the whole story. Into 
the Bible has gone the life of men 
and God. Into it has gone chiefly 
the life of Jesus. Out of it come 
wisdom, strength, guidance, and in- 
spiration for the lives of men. Its 
133 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

daily use will furnish tonic and 
help. No other book has done so 
much for men. No other men equal 
those who have been made mighty 
on this literature. 

The men who have communed 
most with God have most effectively 
maintained life at its best. Many 
times in these letters I have re- 
peated that wonderful phrase, "the 
practice of the presence of God." 
This practice is a habit with many 
from Enoch down. Sometimes des- 
ignated one way, sometimes another, 
it means that intimate communion 
which brings the life of God always 
into the life of a man and lifts the 
man's life to the strength and fel- 
lowship of the life eternal. 

And, finally, though I know I 
shall want to write a postscript, one 
maintains himself in excellence and 
in efficiency by practice. Character, 

134 



LETTERS TO MEN 

like muscles, grows flabby when not 
used. A good many men are out of 
practice in the business of doing 
good. They are soft and easily 
wearied in consequence. I wanted 
to write a whole letter on a religious 
man's activities. Maybe I can do 
it yet, but if not, I must put in this 
word here. Jesus spent whole nights 
in prayer. He lived a life of con- 
stant communion with God. He 
met evil at every turn and beat it. 
He was saturated with the Old Tes- 
tament, the noblest literature in 
existence in his day. And he went 
about doing good. No wonder he 
kept the faith. No wonder he could 
say of himself all the things he did 
say. Communion, even as the mys- 
tics communed with God, the use of 
the usual means of grace, and the 
special life of prayer and study of 
the Bible are all essential, but life 
135 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

cannot be maintained in inactivity. 
A religious man's activities are most 
fascinating and thrilling. A man, 
if he has real manliness, wants to 
be doing. Religion gives him his 
chance. And thus shall we keep life 
up to high levels. 

Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us try 
If we then, too, can be such men as he. 

With all love and prayers for us 
all, I remain, dear brethren, 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



136 



LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER IX 
The Unity of a Man's Life 

Dear Brethren: Away back in 
the seventies, some time, I bought, 
for a small sum, a little volume, 
bound in green cloth, which has had 
an immense influence upon many 
men. I mean "Tom Brown's School 
Days," a book many of you have 
read. Generations were brought up 
on it. Matthew Arnold thought it 
a much overrated book, and de- 
clared it only partially represented 
Rugby. Perhaps so, but after more 
than a third of a century I can re- 
call my sensations as I read in the 
preface these words about Thomas 
Arnold, the great Master of Rugby: 
"He certainly did teach us — thank 
God for it — that we could not cut 
our life into slices and say, Tn this 
137 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

slice your actions are indifferent, and 
you need not trouble your heads 
about them one way or another; 
but in this slice, mind what you are 
about, for they are important.' A 
pretty muddle we should have been 
in had we done so. He taught us 
that in this wonderful world no boy 
or man can tell which of his actions 
is indifferent and which not; that 
by a thoughtless word or look we 
may lead astray a brother for whom 
Christ died. He taught us that life 
is a whole, made up of actions and 
thoughts and longings, great and 
small, noble and ignoble; therefore 
the only true wisdom for man or 
boy is to bring the whole life into 
obedience to Him whose world we 
live in and who has purchased us 
with his blood; and that whether 
we eat or drink, or whatsoever we 
do, we are to do all in his name and 

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LETTERS TO MEN 

to his glory; in such teaching, faith- 
fully, as it seems to me, following 
that of Paul of Tarsus, who was 
in the habit of meaning what he 
said, and who laid down this stand- 
ard for every man and boy in his 
time. I think it lies with those 
who say that such teaching will not 
do for us now to show why a teacher 
in the nineteenth century is to 
preach a lower standard than one 
in the first." 

All that, no doubt, seems com- 
monplace enough, but I rarely face 
an audience of men in college or 
elsewhere without having that very 
page out of that dear little old 
volume rise before me. And I 
wonder, after all, if the idea is 
commonplace. I wonder if we are 
in the habit of thinking of our lives 
as being a unity, as being all of one 
piece. Anyhow, with only a few 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

more letters left, it seems to me 
that one of them must be on the 
unity of life. 

How torn we are by the sense of 
division in our lives! We are men 
who deal honestly with ourselves, 
and in our honest moments we 
know that there is a shameful and 
distressing chasm between what we 
know and what we do, between 
what we say and what we are, be- 
tween our best intentions and even 
our highest achievements, between 
the first of life and the last of it. 
We read in an old-time letter — a 
man's account of himself: "I am so 
far from habitually doing what I 
want to do that I find myself doing 
the very thing that I hate. ... It is 
easy for me to want to do right, but 
to act rightly is not easy. I fail to 
do the good thing I want to do, 
but the bad thing that I want not to 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

do — that I habitually do. . . . 
When I want to do right, wrong 
presents itself/' And we echo his 
agonized exclamation, ' ' Miserable 
man that I am!" And until we 
become theological we perfectly un- 
derstand that ancient letter writer. 
This personal statement of his is 
altogether clear to us personally. 
But now when a man really begins 
to think of himself seriously and 
consistently, this war in his own 
life becomes intolerable. He must 
eliminate these contradictions if he 
can. In its worst form this thing 
was called "a body of death." 
Surely a religious man ought to be 
able by some process to close the 
gap between what he says and what 
he is, between his professions and 
his character. Emerson once wrote, 
"What you are speaks so loud I 
cannot hear what you say." Surely, 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

there ought to be a way to close the 
moral chasm between a man's 
knowledge and his conduct; he 
ought to be able to get rid of these 
ethical cleavages, these ethical breaks, 
these ethical "faults," to use the 
geological term. In the real saints 
— not the cloistered saints, but the 
real ones — this lack of unity is re- 
duced to the lowest terms. In 
Jesus it is wholly eliminated. We 
are full of these moral contradic- 
tions. He was wholly free from 
them. His life was like his seamless 
robe — all of one piece. He did as 
well as he knew, he practiced as 
perfectly as he preached. In him 
there was no gap between prayer 
and practice, worship and work, 
knowledge and conduct, vision and 
service, intention and achieve- 
ment. 

The way to cure our condition is 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

to put on Christ as a garment, and 
to have him formed in us as a 
power as well as a hope. He is the 
solvent of life's moral contradic- 
tions. The trouble with us is that 
he does not have the preeminence in 
all things. Every thought is not in 
captivity to Christ as it ought to 
be, as it must be if we are to have 
relief. This is the practical peace of 
Christ — the peace he has and the 
peace he gives. No saint, or would- 
be saint, in all the ages has found 
unity of life apart from him. It is 
evil that really makes this mischief 
and discord. Let us not try to fool 
ourselves. It is salvation that un- 
does this mischief. And there is no 
salvation in any other. There is 
trouble everywhere else, but har- 
mony in him. Sin is the cause and 
he is the cure of all these discords. 
A man is one. A mean streak in 

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A MAN'S RELIGION 

him spoils him all the way through. 
We must get the streak out. Sal- 
vation does that. It seems to fail 
in some men because the salvation 
they get is only another streak. 
Perfect salvation, such as Christ 
means to give, takes the streaks 
out and makes a man a new cre- 
ation. 

I am thinking of another kind of 
unity also — the unity between the 
first of life and the last of it; the 
making the line of life straight, not 
crooked; the giving life early the 
direction it ought to keep till the 
end. Some of you cannot now 
avoid a break. You must face 
about; you have been going the 
wrong way. But you can go right 
the rest of the way. You can make 
the remainder what it should be. 
You can head now the way you 
ought to go. There are two trage- 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

dies, one vastly greater than the 
other — the tragedy of a life that has 
to be turned around, and the tragedy 
of a life that is allowed to go wrong 
clear to the end. And the latter is 
unspeakable. The gospel is for men 
who wish to turn about. It gives 
men a chance to have an old age 
unlike their wicked and foolish 
youth. That is the gospel, the good 
news, the grace. But even this 
glorious gospel cannot wipe out the 
fact of a wicked and foolish youth 
when there has been one. Turn 
about, if you need to, and do it 
now. And tell your sons, and the 
boys you know and love, to face 
right with Christ at the beginning; 
help them to give their lives at the 
very beginning the direction they 
ought to keep until the end. This 
prevents the break at the middle 
and the bitterness at the end. 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

When Sir Philip Sidney was just 
a lad he wrote to his brother, "If 
there are any good wars, I shall 
attend them." All the rest of his 
life was a living commentary on 
that sentence. Cecil Rhodes, an 
Oxford student, hunting health in 
Africa, dreamed of presenting an em- 
pire to his queen. All the rest of his 
life is based on that. That purpose 
gave direction to all his years and 
deeds. A student in another English 
university, on his twenty-second 
birthnight, puts on record a like 
experience. It is Charles Kingsley 
who writes: "My birthnight. I 
have been for the last hour on the 
seashore, not dreaming, but think- 
ing deeply and strongly, and form- 
ing determinations which are to 
affect my destiny through time and 
through eternity. Before the sleep- 
ing earth, and the sleepless sea and 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

stars, I have devoted myself to God, 
a vow never (if he gives me the faith 
I pray for) to be recalled/ ' And all 
the rest is based on that. A young 
lawyer, going down the Mississippi, 
saw some beautiful young Negro 
girls being sold into slavery. He 
turned aside and said to a friend: 
11 Great God, if I ever get a chance 
to hit that thing, I will hit it hard." 
One later day, as President of the 
republic, he issued the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation. It was all of 
one piece. Far away, far back in 
history, a Lad twelve years old got 
lost from his people as they went 
home from the ancient camp meet- 
ing. They found the Lad in the 
temple asking and answering ques- 
tions. With a clear look in his 
young eyes he said, "I must be 
about my Father's business/ ' And 
you see the way his face is set. 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

O, blessed be the boy whose face 
is set in the right direction so early, 
and blessed the parents of such a 
boy! 

Afterward, this Lad, grown to 
manhood as you are, as we are, will 
use other words: "My Father's 
will"; "My meat is to do"; "I must 
finish"; "My Father worketh, I 
work"; "Not my will, but thine." 
The line of his life remains un- 
broken, the direction of it un- 
changed. At the end he will look 
His Father calmly in the face and 
say, "I have finished the work thou 
gavest me to do." No wonder such 
a life increases its efficiency with 
every passing day. 

This is our lesson for this month. 
We must close the moral gaps in 
our lives. We must give life at once 
the direction and tone it should 
keep until the end. We must al- 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

ways be attending and meaning to 
attend the good wars for humanity. 
In youth, manhood, and age we 
must be about our Father's busi- 
ness. Then through the swift years 
life will always be good and always 
better, and "the best always yet 
to be." 

I am writing these letters to men. 
We are rather scarred and grizzled, 
but there is still a lot of hope for us. 
But I wonder if you men know at 
all what you mean and may mean to 
the young men and boys in your 
family and town. Have you been 
leaving the matter of religion for 
boys to the women of your fam- 
ily and church? Fathers and big 
brothers allow themselves to mean 
so little to the religious life of their 
sons and younger brothers, when 
they are meant to mean so much. 
Many a boy has an idea that reli- 
149 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

gion is chiefly a thing of women, for 
women, and by women. But a 
young man is tremendously im- 
pressed by the religion of an older 
man. A man can lead boys if only 
he will. And you have it in your 
power to set the faces of many boys 
in the right direction while they are 
boys. And you can turn other men 
toward the light and bring unity to 
their lives. Many times each year I 
read Matthew Arnold's wonderful 
poem about his noble father, and 
I can never restrain my emotions, 
can hardly keep from shouting, 
over these lines: 

But thou would'st not alone 
Be saved, my father, alone 
Conquer and come to thy good, 
Leaving the rest in the wild. 
Therefore, to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself; 
And at the end of thy day, 
O faithful shepherd! to come 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 

150 



LETTERS TO MEN 

And I want your lives in them- 
selves, and in their influence, to be 
all of one piece, even like the 
Master's own. 

Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



151 



A MAN'S RELIGION 



LETTER X 

A Modern Man's Modern Bible 

Dear Brethren: You may or 
may not remember a sentence which 
occurred early in these letters: "If 
I knew a better book, one that did 
me more good, I should use it." 
That sentence fairly starts what I 
want to say on this subject. I have 
put the word "modern" twice in 
the title of this letter, not as a 
challenge, nor as a reflection upon 
the past, but solely in recognition 
of the fact that we are modern men 
and because of my firm assurance 
that the Bible is also modern, a 
book with value and meaning for 
us modern men. This does not in- 
stitute comparison between our- 
selves and our fathers, nor between 
their Bible and ours. We must live 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

our lives. They lived theirs. We 
must have our Bible and it must 
fit into our lives. I think we rather 
exaggerate the extent to which the 
men of the older day were really 
Bible men, but all that is apart from 
our necessities and life. 

To the modern man two things 
appear true? First, that there has 
been a lot of controversy about the 
Bible, which seems to have changed 
or modified its place as an authority. 
Second, that the Bible is a very big 
book which there is not much time 
to read after he has finished the 
daily papers and the magazines. I 
am going to admit both of those 
propositions. The authority of the 
Bible has been greatly modified since 
we were boys, but the modification 
has been in the direction of a larger 
and more vital rather than a smaller 
and less living authority. The Bible 
153 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

has a place of real power in thought, 
morals, and life to-day that our 
fathers never dreamed of. This is 
especially true among scholars. 
Really there has not been a day 
since we were born when scholars 
were paying such attention to the 
Bible or were reckoning with it so 
carefully as to-day. 

It is true that the Bible is a large 
book and these are busy days, and 
current literature is very volumi- 
nous. The current literature is 
rather compelling and imperious. It 
not only keeps us from Bible- 
reading, but it keeps us from read- 
ing a lot of the best books in the 
world. Plato and Ruskin and 
Emerson have rather a sorry chance 
with an unknown reporter or a 
well-known magazine writer. But 
that, after all, is not the question. 
The real question is this: What is 

154 



LETTERS TO MEN 

the Bible good for? And hdw can 
we get the largest benefit and value 
out of it? The answers vary. In 
certain ages the Bible was thought 
to be chiefly good for theology and 
for religious argument. If a man 
could quote a "Thus saith the Lord," 
he was mighty in argument. I re- 
member well some debaters of this 
sort whom I heard in my youth. It 
seems to me now that the emphasis 
upon controversy was rather over- 
done and that it did not much 
conduce to religion. At other times 
the Bible has been thought valuable 
chiefly as an ethical code or moral 
guide. This theory lays great stress 
upon the Ten Commandments, the 
moral precepts, the regulations and 
specific directions for conduct of all 
sorts. One of the historic cate- 
chisms declares that "the Scriptures 
principally teach what man is to 
155 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

believe concerning God and what 
duties God requires of man." There 
is a view current in our own day 
that regards the Bible chiefly from 
the literary viewpoint and exalts it 
as the supreme literature of the 
world. 

And all these views have truth 
in them, large and important truth, 
which cannot be ignored without 
loss. But you men are chiefly in- 
terested in life, and a book to rule 
or lure you must be valuable chiefly 
for life. And this is the value of the 
Bible for men. Any book gets its 
real value for and grip upon life in 
proportion to the amount of real 
life there is in it and the amount 
of real life that comes out of it. 
Into the Bible life has gone the 
life of men and women, the life of 
God himself, the life of Jesus Christ 
above all. It has a good many 

156 



LETTERS TO MEN 

qualities and it lacks some, but it is 
not lacking in life. How the life 
stirs in the Book! Centuries make 
no difference. The men and women 
who once walked into the pages and 
chapters of the Bible still walk 
before the eyes of the world. Into 
the Bible went the life of man and 
the life of God. They lived to- 
gether, men and God, together 
working out human destiny under 
divine guidance. Human hopes, 
doubts, fears, affections, hates, cour- 
age, cowardice, bigness, littleness, 
obedience, disobedience— they are 
all here, just as they are all in the 
lives of men to-day. The Bible is 
said to find us as no other book 
does. The reason is that we our- 
selves are actually in its pages. 
Divine purpose, patience, wrath, 
wisdom, love, grace — they also are 
all here. We do not bother our- 
157 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

selves in these letters about the 
question of inspiration. We find 
the Spirit of God coming out of the 
Bible as we use it and we conclude 
that the Spirit must have gone into 
it. We conclude that it was in- 
spired because we find that it is 
inspiring. 

What is it good for, then? It is 
good for the lives of men because it 
is the record of the lives of other 
men in whom and with whom God 
worked and dwelt; good for the 
lives of men because there is so 
much and such life in it; good be- 
cause the Bible gives us so full 
and luminous a record of what used 
to be called ' 'God's dealings with 
men"; good above all because it 
brings us the story and knowledge 
of Jesus Christ. It is our sure guide 
to Jesus, and through him to God, 
and then to life that is life indeed. 

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LETTERS TO MEN 

For many years I was bothered and 
disturbed about the Bible, regarding 
it with a kind of false reverence and 
an unnatural regard because of my 
belief that its origin was in some way 
magical. I used to wonder how an 
inspired man felt while he was in- 
spired, whether he was inspired all 
the time, or whether he was inspired 
only while writing; and inspiration 
seemed like a sort of elevated trance. 
But the net effect was to put the 
Bible into an unnatural relation to 
everything. Then came the radiant 
day when I learned late what I 
ought to have learned early, that the 
Bible was first life and then litera- 
ture, first an experience, then a rec- 
ord, first the long years of God and 
man working together in the un- 
folding development of God's grace 
and purpose and man's education, 
then the noble account of it, and 
159 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

from that radiant day the Bible has 
had a place all its own, but a wholly- 
new and better place. 

Phillips Brooks says it in these 
words: "The New Testament is a 
biography. Make it a mere book 
of dogmas, and its vitality is gone. 
Make it a mere book of laws, and it 
grows hard and untimely. Make it 
a biography, and it is a true book of 
life. Make it the history of Jesus of 
Nazareth, and the world holds it in 
its heart forever." 

From Professor Bruce I obtained 
another view, not contradictory, but 
alike satisfying. It is stated in these 
words: "Its contents chiefly relate 
to a purpose of grace and its great 
watchword is redemption/ ' So for 
many years now I have thought and 
spoken of the Bible as the book 
of life and the book of redemption. 
Many questions that I once carried 
1 60 



LETTERS TO MEN 

to it for answer I no longer carry to 
it; many demands that I once made 
upon it I make no more. It is no 
longer "a repository of infallible in- 
formation upon a lot of miscella- 
neous subjects," but it is a sure 
guide to the Redeemer, a lamp to 
the feet, and a light to paths of 
men in this world. Many things I 
fail to find in its pages, but I do not 
fail to find the face of Christ and 
the way of life. 

And thus we get our insight into 
how there came to be a Bible. 
There came to be a Bible because 
there was a divine movement for 
man's redemption and the salva- 
tion and guidance of his life, and 
this is the record of it. There is no 
other book like it. No other has in 
it such record of grace, such avenues 
to grace. No other has in all its 
pages such a figure as the Redeemer, 
161 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

who once came among men. In no 
other book can a man find his way 
to the Redeemer and learn with him 
and of him the way to live here and 
hereafter. You think this is an old 
book, and so it is, but it is alive 
with the ever-living presence of 
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever. A Hindoo 
asked me last year why he should 
read the Bible, and in what respects 
it is superior to other sacred books. 
The answer is easy: The Bible is 
the sure record of how God came 
to man in many ways, and per- 
fectly in Jesus Christ, and it is the 
sure guide to man seeking to come 
to God through Jesus Christ. If 
any other book contained a worthier 
revelation of God, or a better per- 
son than Jesus Christ, or a truer 
light on the way out of sin into 
righteousness, or a better way to 
162 



LETTERS TO MEN 

live, I would take it at once. There 
is no better. "There will be no 
better book until a better life than 
Jesus's life has been lived/ ' 

Just because it has this quality of 
life in it, and because this kind of 
life comes out of it into the lives 
of men; just because God put him- 
self into the life of which the Bible 
is the literature and into the litera- 
ture itself, and because if with all 
their hearts men shall truly seek 
him, they shall in and through these 
pages ever truly find him; just be- 
cause the Bible contains the story 
of Jesus Christ and because the 
words he speaks are spirit and life; 
just because the Bible, as the book 
of redemption and life, is the most 
modern book in the world, I ask 
you modern men to saturate your 
lives with it. Courage, faith, hope, 
love, mercy, truth, service went into 

163 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

it and are in it. Courage, faith, 
hope, love, mercy, truth, and serv- 
ice come out of it. Is it the book 
of redemption to you? Is it the 
book of life to you? Have you 
found in it the way of salvation and 
the way to live? For us men the 
chief danger about the Bible is that 
it shall be more reverenced than 
read, more honored than used, set 
apart in a place by itself instead of 
being made a real influence in our 
lives. Altogether too many of us 
stand through life as strangers out- 
side the Bible. I know of nothing 
better to do with the Bible than to 
read it and use it. And the best 
thing modern scholarship has done 
has been to recover the Bible for 
practical, vital use. 

Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 

164 



LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER XI 

A Religious Man in Modern 
Society 

Dear Brethren: This subject 
has broken into more than one of 
these letters already. It has a way 
of breaking in. Religion is no 
longer, if it ever was, a purely indi- 
vidual thing, a thing between God 
and one man. Always there is 
another man. Some of the Master's 
prayers have been answered without 
any effort on our part. Even this 
negative request, "I pray not that 
thou shouldest take them- out of the 
world," has had rather a large 
answer. For weal or woe, for com- 
fort or discomfort, for fidelity or 
dodging, for shirking or service, the 
modern religious man is surely in 
the midst of human life. He is no 
165 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

hermit. He may not be much of a 
hero in the strife, but the strife 
goes on all around him all the time. 
What, then, shall he do and be? 

Well, first of all, he can really be a 
modern man. Being alive this year 
does not make him a modern man 
any more than wearing good clothes 
makes a man a gentleman. A keen 
student has pointed out that current 
society contains a lot of primitive 
men and women, educated and un- 
educated, rich and poor, whose 
ideals, passions, motives, standards 
of right and wrong, all belong to 
men and women in the savage state. 
Their habits are barbaric in their 
essence. Their faith is antediluvian 
and superstitious, their attitude to 
society that of the marauder or 
pirate. And certain of these con- 
temporary savages have a frightful 
kind of pride in being savages. 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

They flout all this modern senti- 
ment. They boast of their satisfac- 
tion with things that are old. They 
resent the better views of God, the 
new spirit of brotherhood, the social 
feeling which is in the very air, the 
new humanity, the spirit of Christ 
in the relations of men. When their 
pastor speaks of any of these things 
they tell him to preach the gospel. 

So I say you can be a modern 
man, quick and responsive to those 
forces which are making a better 
world, and are active in shaping the 
coming day so that it will be a day 
of the Lord. I think every one of 
us ought to sit down and carefully 
think himself over in the light of a 
question like this: "Am I contem- 
porary of my own contemporaries or 
of some others, far past or far 
future?" 

So too you can be a man of 

i6 7 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

spiritual life and authority. That 
word i 'authority' ' we resent in our 
modern republican-democratic life. 
As Charles Dudley Warner once 
said: "The Western man— meaning 
the American man — knows no mas- 
ters, not even the old masters.' ' 
But we do not object to exercising 
authority. We rather like that. 
Well, here is our chance. The 
world is waiting for men who have 
real spiritual power and can exer- 
cise genuine spiritual leadership; 
men who know the way of the 
spiritual life because they have gone 
over it; men who can point the way 
because they are wise in spiritual 
things; men who can so exhibit 
spiritual power that other men will 
follow them in the spiritual realm — 
never were such men more in de- 
mand. We have grown weary of 
managers and manipulators of hu- 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

man life. The age craves men of 
spiritual power. We have men of 
learning, men of capacity, men of 
energy, men of courage, men of cul- 
ture. We need them all. The age 
is not lacking in material forces or 
unfamiliar with material standards. 
There is a word in the Bible about 
the order of the natural and spirit- 
ual. We seem still to be in the 
period of the natural. We lay our 
emphasis upon business principles 
and business administration. In- 
deed, this seems the new infallibil- 
ity. When a man wants to say the 
final word he declares that he speaks 
as a plain business man, and he 
means that there is nothing more to 
be said. 

Now, I make no attack upon any 

of this in this letter, but I venture 

to say to you men that the gospel 

standards are not material, but 

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A MAN'S RELIGION 

spiritual. Love, self-sacrifice, the 
life of the Spirit, the victories of 
the cross, and peace — all these are 
in the Christian ideal. And the 
final test of men and nations is 
their conformity to the standards of 
the higher life and their ability to 
speak with spiritual authority. 

So too you can be men of moral 
leadership. This is not quite say- 
ing the same thing over again. 
Authority over evil Jesus exercised 
like a King, and authority over 
evil he conferred like a King. He 
meant men to rid the world of evil. 
He did not mean that they should 
live apart from the world, or, living 
in it, be beaten by it. He meant 
that they should live in it and be 
victorious over it. Some of you men 
to whom I am writing have never 
struck a moral note so that it could 
be heard. You have been con- 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

formists, followers, and some of you 
have been trimmers and cowards, as, 
in many cases, your fathers were 
before you. You have quoted freely 
and easily the old words, "I am 
neither a prophet nor the son of a 
prophet." You mean by it that you 
cannot guess what will happen in 
the future. But that is not the real 
meaning. The prophet's function is 
not chiefly foretelling the future. 
He speaks chiefly the truth to his 
age, not chiefly the truth about 
future ages. And there are men — 
some of you are such men — whose 
fathers never spoke one brave word 
against wrong, and who themselves 
have never spoken one brave word 
against wrong. They have been 
afraid it would hurt business or 
something else. Hardly any word is 
sadder than that, "I have not the 
spirit of a prophet, nor had my 
171 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

father. He never lifted up his voice 
for a great cause, nor have I. We 
have been safe men." Such men 
forget that 

"Tis man's perdition to be safe 

When for the truth he ought to die. 

You cannot guess or foretell the 
future, but you can go far toward 
forming the future. One brave, true 
word against wrong, for right, has 
more than once changed history's 
course. 

Surprise was once expressed in the 
words, "Is Saul also among the 
prophets?" Nobody expected it. 
Nobody expects it of a lot of men. 
They are not counted upon. Their 
fathers were not. There have been 
two generations or more all alike in 
their utter lack of moral leadership 
and passion. They have not shared 
God's counsels nor spoken God's 
message to their age. Great causes 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

have come and gone, have been de- 
feated or victorious, but these un- 
prophetic fathers and sons have had 
no part in the Lord's battle. I do 
not see how you can endure it. And 
especially if your fathers were not 
prophets and spoke no brave words 
for right and against wrong, do I 
see how you can keep out of the 
prophetic ranks. You ought to re- 
deem the family name. Your son 
is entitled to a better heritage than 
yours. There will not be too many 
prophets. 

I heard a man once say that if 
all God's people were prophets there 
would be an over-supply. He had 
the false and professional view. No, 
what a day it would be if all God's 
people were prophets; if all had the 
spirit to speak forth for God and 
humanity, against all wrong, for all 
truth and righteousness! How does 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

this come to pass? By sharing the 
life and counsels of the great 
Prophet of all until he is formed in 
you. Then men will note when you 
speak that you have been with 
Jesus and learned of him. They 
did that once. It can happen again, 
"To see the truth and tell it, to be 
accurate and brave about the moral 
facts of our day, to this extent the 
Vision and the Voice are possible 
for every man of us." 

Once more, you can be men of 
human sympathy. I do not mean 
of pity or charity or condescension. 
These are quite too prevalent, even 
in the republic. We are a republic, 
but we are not very republican; a 
democracy, but not very democratic. 
The caste system in India is the 
curse of the country. It arises and 
smites you in all its hideous and 
ugly forms a hundred times a day. 

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LETTERS TO MEN 

And then you think of home and 
your Church and shudder to re- 
member how far another caste sys- 
tem has taken possession of our 
American life. There is no need 
that I should mention the proofs or 
give the illustrations. You know 
them. You know the snobbery, the 
selfishness, the hard lines between 
men, the modern "man's inhuman- 
ity to man." And part of it is on 
one side of the cruel social or racial 
or other line and part of it on the 
other, and on either side it is in- 
tolerable. I am writing to men of 
all castes. You know the condi- 
tions. Break them. Establish hu- 
man sympathy between men, not 
pity and not charity, but the sym- 
pathy which is equal to love and 
justice. Establish rights, your own 
and others, on the secure basis of 
right. It is worth while to be a 
175 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

man and to be alive for such a task 
as this. 

There are some unforgettable pic- 
tures of that Other Man, our Elder 
Brother. You can shut your eyes 
and see him feeding the hungry, 
healing the blind and the lepers, 
raising the dead, giving new char- 
acters to the abandoned and out- 
cast, helping workingmen at their 
toil, telling all of them the truth 
they needed to hear, and scourging 
certain types of wrong. But you 
cannot recall in all his wonderful life 
one act of condescension or show of 
unbrotherliness. Somehow, he did 
what so many of us find so hard — 
he just lived as a man among men 
and all manhood felt it. Twenty- 
five years ago I asked a famous 
judge in Ohio a question that made 
us both smile because it was so 
large and in a way so foolish. But 
176 



LETTERS TO MEN 

I still had youth's enthusiasm, which 
so many of us have so largely lost. 
Neither age nor the age had chilled 
me, and I asked him what was the 
most difficult thing in modern life. 
The judge grew silent. I can see 
him yet across the years. Then he 
answered, "The most difficult thing 
is to get the spirit of Jesus to prevail 
perfectly in the relations of men." 

men, these are not holiday letters 

1 am writing simply to fill a few 
pages. Pages can go blank, but 
men cannot live without human 
sympathy, the republic cannot last 
without love and justice, and the 
spirit of Jesus must, somehow, be 
made to prevail. And this is the 
fairest chance that the modern man 
has in modern society. 

The late William Newton Clarke 
urged the age to do three things in 
this time of transition. He urged us 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

to keep the faith, to keep an open 
mind toward truth, and to enlarge 
our hearts. Men are so ready to do 
one or even two of these things 
when they ought to do them all. 
But, surely, the religious man in 
modern society must do them all. 
He must believe in Christ, he must 
keep an open mind toward all truth, 
and he must love even with Christ's 
love. He must forswear aristocratic 
exclusiveness, class distinction, and 
race hatreds, and live with men as 
men, even as Jesus did. And this is 
modern society's high call to the 
modern religious man. 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



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LETTERS TO MEN 

LETTER XII 

A Man's Religious Experience 

Dear Brethren: Religion has so 
many sides, so many beautiful fea- 
tures, that I wonder it could ever 
have seemed the narrow thing it 
has so often appeared to be. Over 
and over I have said to myself that 
I must do my best to make religion 
appear to you as the rich, abundant, 
wonderful thing it really is. In- 
deed, that seems to be about the 
best thing that can be done for any 
men or any age. The great ages 
have been those ages having a full 
and complete conception of religion; 
the meager, thin, and imperfect pe- 
riods those 'laying the whole stress 
of religion upon any part of it." 
And this is true of persons as of 
periods. 

179 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

I hesitated about the title for 
this letter because experience has in 
so many minds come to have a 
theological rather than a personal 
meaning, though this, of all the 
things connected with religion, is 
most personal. Just because it is 
so personal, so individual, it is not 
easy to write or speak of it without 
the possibility of confusion. Here 
more than anywhere else is there 
need of large allowance for indi- 
vidual differences of temperament 
and characteristic. Much mischief 
has been wrought by the effort to 
impose a common or particular type 
of experience upon all classes, and 
vast pain has been suffered by many 
because of the absence of an ex- 
perience like that possessed by 
some outstanding individual or 
group. Particularly has the impo- 
sition of an adult type of experience 
1 80 



LETTERS TO MEN 

upon child life been fruitful of 
mischief and confusion. 

Now I know very well that many 
of you men, if you were writing to 
me, would say something about like 
this: "I can understand religious 
duties and can do them, can com- 
prehend religious relations and en- 
joy them, but I do not seem to have 
the kind of experience some other 
men have and I sometimes wonder 
whether I am religious at all. I 
had no such dramatic conversion as 
some men seem to have had and 
no such religious emotion as some 
men seem constantly to experience. 1 ' 
That is among men a common at- 
titude of mind, keeping some from 
becoming religious and some others 
in a constant state of discontent 
with what they have, and uncertain 
desire for something else, without 
their knowing quite what it is. 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

The very first word to say to you 
in affectionate answer to this state- 
ment is this: "Seek and cultivate 
your own religious experience and 
do not be disturbed because it is 
unlike the apparent experiences of 
other men." Men profoundly differ 
from one another and from them- 
selves. Experience is no more uni- 
form than disease. Each human 
soul is a distinct thing, each human 
life unlike every other. They say 
that no two birds sing exactly alike, 
and even that a faithful and intelli- 
gent shepherd can distinguish each 
individual sheep from the rest of the 
flock. No man is like any other 
man, and no man is all the time like 
himself. We used to hear about the 
four great divisions of mankind, "the 
sanguine, the nervous, the melan- 
cholic, and the phlegmatic." It 
sounds rather fine, and apart from 
182 



LETTERS TO MEN 

our knowledge of men is rather fine. 
Such a division can be used in 
books, in novels say, where you can 
make your nervous man always ap- 
pear nervous and your phlegmatic 
man always phlegmatic, but in ac- 
tual life every man belongs in 
greater or less degree to all four 
divisions. 

Do not expect, therefore, a reli- 
gious experience exactly like some 
other man's, nor be disturbed by 
temperamental variations in your 
own. Paul was not like Peter; 
John was not like either of them; 
Luther and Wesley were not like 
each other nor like anybody else. 
John Bunyan and General Booth 
were as different as two men could 
well be. Yet each of these had his 
own experience of Christ and of 
salvation from sin, his own witness 
of the Spirit, his own stroke of em- 

183 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

phasis, his own growth and develop- 
ment, his own form of statement, his 
own angle of vision. Christ was the 
center of the experience of each, 
the common object of devotion and 
affection and the undisputed Lord 
and Master of each life. 

And the experience of each 
changed and grew with the chang- 
ing years. The beginning did not 
remain for either the perpetual test 
of the experience of later years. I 
know men who throughout life lay 
their supreme emphasis upon the 
fact and date of their conversion, 
others who can neither name date 
nor place. This also is partly a 
matter of the individual. But this 
is my word to you: Seek and main- 
tain your own experience and do 
not be disturbed because it does not 
seem to be like another's. God 
has many a good way into the 
184 



LETTERS TO MEN 

kingdom and an infinitely varied 
way of life in it. Men state their 
experiences differently, and the same 
man states his differently at differ- 
ent times. Some men are reserved 
and restrained in speech, others free 
and ready. Some ever use the quiet 
colors in language, others habitually 
the rich and striking colors. The 
reality is the common touch with 
Christ. Be disturbed if you have 
not that or, having had it, no longer 
have it. Be not disturbed even 
though your speech about it seems 
subdued, if your consciousness of it 
is sure and steadfast. And be sure 
that it is an experience of Christ 
rather than an experience of an idea 
or an emotion. Some men are in 
love with loving, some in love with 
their beloved. You can tell the dif- 
ference. Some men confess their 
experiences, others confess their 

185 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

Christ. Some talk most of love, 
others most of the beloved. The 
experience of one centers in him- 
self, which is not a good center; 
the experience of another centers in 
Christ, always a good center. The 
experience of one works out specially 
into activity, of another into char- 
acter, of another into feeling, of 
another into talk. And the out- 
come depends upon many things, 
but chiefly always upon the man 
himself. 

And yet we must not overem- 
phasize the individuality of experi- 
ence so as to forget the brotherhood, 
the fellowship, of it. A keen writer 
puts it thus: "When Paul prays 
that 'we may be strong to appre- 
hend with all the saints the love 
of Christ/ he is indicating the fact 
that it is only possible to grasp the 
dimensions of the love of Christ on 
1 86 



LETTERS TO MEN 

a basis of fellowship. It takes all of 
us, and all of us together, to com- 
pass the vastness of the love of 
Christ. It is only in fellowship, by 
making common stock of our Chris- 
tian experience, that we can gain a 
real apprehension of its entire con- 
tent; and it is therefore only in 
fellowship that we can realize a 
balanced, wholesome, individual 
Christian experience. It is one of 
the commonplaces of our observa- 
tion that the solitary unattached 
Christian invariably becomes a re- 
ligious crank. Idiosyncrasies of doc- 
trine are usually the products of 
isolation — for soundness of doctrine 
rests in the last resort upon sound- 
ness of experience. Sound doctrine 
is the child of a normal, balanced, 
all-round Christian experience." 

I do not doubt that many of you 
are thinking that a man's religious 

i8 7 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

experience is what comes to him 
and not at all what he makes it; 
just as many men think it chiefly 
a matter of emotion or feeling and 
not chiefly a matter of will. Hor- 
ton declares that "we make our 
own religious experience/ ' That is 
rather startling. It puts so much 
responsibility upon us. We have 
been accustomed to think that re- 
ligious experience is wholly the gift 
of God, and this turns all that 
upside down. If this be true, it 
makes us responsible for the mea- 
gerness, the poverty, the inferiority, 
the mediocrity of our experiences. 
We have had some small comfort, 
vague and uncertain to be sure, in 
pitying ourselves because of the 
character of our experiences. 

What is the truth about this? 
Religious experience is all from God 
and all from man. He gives the 
188 



LETTERS TO MEN 

great gifts of pardon, redemption, 
adoption, friendship. We do not 
create them nor invent them, nor 
even discover them. But we surely 
determine what all this will mean 
to us. It is all a gift from God, 
it is all a work of the will within. 
My experience, my relation to God, 
and my friendship with Christ are 
all absolutely conditioned by my 
own will toward them all. He 
says, "Follow me," and walks off 
into his world of help for other 
men. O will within me, make 
quick, full response! There is com- 
panionship and friendship in your 
decision or there is loss to you and 
to Him. He says, "Learn of me," 
and leads out into the vast realm 
of that truth that sets men free. 
Quick, quick, my will, after him, 
with him, for the way of truth is 
opening to you, the experience of 
189 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

truth stretching there ahead like a 
shining path, with the Master walk- 
ing in it. He says, ' 'Believe me," 
and new life, freedom from sin, 
victory over appetite, triumph over 
temptation are in his hands, his 
tones, his wonderful eyes, his heart. 
I have no experience, but I will get 
it by taking him at his word. He 
says, "Repent and believe the gos- 
pel." It does not sound so theo- 
logical from his lips as from some 
others, and, looking into his face, a 
man can see what he means. Life 
is wrong. He wants it set right; 
a man wants it set right. Together 
they work at it. Life is at fault, 
stained and ugly, with evil tenden- 
cies and habits. He wants it 
cleansed, and straightened, and its 
tendencies turned about it. The 
man wants all that too. And the 
power and love of God reach down, 
190 



LETTERS TO MEN 

and the will and longing of man 
reach up. Somewhere they meet — 
the distance is not great — and an 
experience is begun. Maybe the 
man will shout, maybe he will not. 
It all depends upon the kind of man 
he is. But the angels w411 set up a 
perfect tumult of joy over it. And 
a man becomes aware of God's 
presence as a help and strength; 
aware of personal fellowship with 
Jesus Christ that becomes so inti- 
mate at last that nothing else on 
earth is so sweet; aware of forgive- 
ness and adoption and the witness 
of the Spirit; aware of strength and 
hope and courage coming from this 
companionship with a Friend un- 
seen but real; aware of new mean- 
ings in the familiar words of Scrip- 
ture and of new joy in prayer and 
service. And it will not matter 
whether a man is chiefly sanguine, 
191 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

chiefly nervous, or chiefly phleg- 
matic, his religious experience will 
be his own and will be rich and full 
and steadfast. Religious experience 
will not be something making a 
part of a man's life; it will fill 
and permeate the whole of his 
life. Righteousness as an experi- 
ence in life, love for men as an 
experience in life, being forgiven 
and forgiving as an experience in 
life, having faith and hope and 
courage and self-control and pa- 
tience and charity as an experience 
in life — all this would transform the 
lives of men. But this is not what 
men mean when they talk of their 
religious experience. No, but they 
would mean all they now mean, and 
all this also if experience ceased at 
once to be conventional and par- 
tial and became vital and complete. 
Why are we so slow to enter when 
192 



LETTERS TO MEN 

the way is so fair, the life so noble, 
the goal so sure? 

One note has come out again and 
again in these letters. I hear it 
coming again and am not sorry. 
What do you think those early men 
thought of religious experience after 
three years of life with that other 
Man? You can tell what they 
thought by what they said and did 
and were. They evidently thought 
of religious experience as the shar- 
ing of his life, as friendship with 
him, as slowly or swiftly gaining his 
qualities from him. They brought 
their soiled, broken, imperfect lives 
to him. They yielded themselves to 
his influence and guidance, set him 
before them as an ideal, received 
from him the gifts and graces he 
imparted. It is not easy to define. 
It was really an experience of him. 
They were his disciples. Men took 
193 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

knowledge of them that they had 
been with Christ and learned of 
him. Sharing his life, beholding his 
face, they were transformed into the 
same image. That for them was re- 
ligious experience. He is the same 
yesterday, when they lived, to-day, 
when we live, and forever, when 
we shall all live. And religious ex- 
perience is receiving, sharing, and 
living the life of God which in many 
divine ways is divinely imparted to 
the lives of men. 

I am anxious about your beliefs, 
your relationships, your lives in all 
respects, and for this cause I am 
most concerned about your ex- 
perience of God in Jesus Christ by 
the Holy Spirit. 

Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



194 



LETTERS TO MEN 

LETTER XIII 
A Man's Activities 

Dear Brethren: Do you remem- 
ber when you first heard the words 
"a good man"? In my extreme 
youth my parents always spoke of 
the devil as "the bad man" and of 
God as "the good man." I have 
never quite got over a liking for 
that way of thinking and speaking. 
But I recall yet the first man I ever 
associated with the idea that he 
was a good man. And I wondered, 
in my small, boyish way, what made 
him a good man, and how it was 
that he was a good man. It was not 
simply that he was a church mem- 
ber. Not all the men in the church 
were called good men. It perplexed 
me that they were not. It does yet, 
even more painfully now than then. 
195 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

I remember my final conclusion as 
to the man in question. I con- 
cluded that he was a good man 
because he meant to be good and 
meant to do good. That was a 
boy's philosophy. It has been 
elaborated a good deal since then, 
modified some, chiefly by addition, 
but never abandoned. The motive 
of genuine goodness and the prac- 
tice of genuine goodness still seem 
to lie at the heart of the whole 
matter. The infinite Good Man, 
whom I loved as a boy and love 
vastly more now, seems to be the 
perfect embodiment of good will and 
good deeds. And one of the sen- 
tences about his wonderful Son that 
satisfies me most is the one which 
says, "He went about doing good." 
If there were nothing else said about 
him, it seems to me that all other 
men of good will ought to follow 
196 



LETTERS TO MEN 

him without question because of 
this. 

Now, how shall I begin to speak 
of your activities as religious men? 
Surely not by making a list, even a 
useful and interesting list, of things 
for you to do. Does not this whole 
question of a religious man's ac- 
tivities root farther back in the will 
and motive to do good? Did Emer- 
son say something like this? — "Men 
do not ask what you do half so much 
as what it is that makes you do it." 
The motive is really the vital thing. 
Lacking it, there will be no activi- 
ties worth w T hile; lacking pure mo- 
tive, there will be no noble and 
unselfish activities; lacking large and 
expanding motives, there will be 
no lasting activities; and lacking 
high motives, you will not become 
larger and better men all the while 
you are doing good and useful 
197 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

things. Really, then, the first ques- 
tion I should ask about your ac- 
tivities is not what you are doing, 
but whether you have the motive 
to be active at all. A list of things 
to do would be of no service to you 
if your motive is clouded, or ex- 
hausted, or flattened out. A soldier 
of the Civil War was telling me 
that he was shot twice in battle, 
"once by a spent ball." The aim 
was good, and the bullet was good, 
but the motive was exhausted. 
That, really, is the explanation of 
the utter futility and ineffective- 
ness of a lot of so-called Christian 
activity. The ball is spent before 
it strikes. 

The second thing I wish to say 
about this matter of activities is 
still not to give you a list of things 
to do, but some principles to de- 
termine what you shall do. There 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

is tremendous perplexity in prac- 
tical life over apparently conflict- 
ing duties. There ought to be 
some fairly steady, sensible prin- 
ciples for men's guidance. They 
will not save you from doing hard 
thinking. They ought not to do 
that. That would destroy char- 
acter instead of developing it. Good 
men must not become good ma- 
chines even in the business of doing 
good. Many writers have discussed 
this matter. There are many lists 
of principles relating to our duties. 
Perhaps this is as good as any: 
"We must observe the laws of 
nearness, aptitude, urgency, and 
size." No one of you can do every- 
thing there is to do, nor everything he 
would like to do. You must choose. 
Many men never see a near duty. 
They are always dreaming of big 
things they would do somewhere 
199 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

else; always forgetting to be faithful 
over a few things while having their 
eyes fixed and hearts set on being 
rulers over many things. Many 
strong men are reformers away 
from home, philanthropists to every 
one except their needy neighbors, 
sort of philanthropists at large, 
strong in the lodge, indifferent at 
home. 

Likewise many men utterly ignore 
their own special aptitudes in de- 
termining their activities. Men do 
not always know their own capaci- 
ties or lack of them. They need 
help in order to discover what they 
can do best. The music of many a 
church is ruined by some kindly 
soul who thinks he can lead the 
choir and is permitted to do so be- 
cause he volunteers and is so faith- 
ful and willing. The finances of 
some churches are forever in a 

200 



LETTERS TO MEN 

tangle because they are managed by 
some willing, incapable brother who 
cannot manage his own. And many 
able, capable men hold aloof from 
the activities in which they would 
shine, and exhaust their skill in 
criticism of those who do try but 
are incompetent. Now, look the 
facts in the face. There is some- 
thing that will not be well done 
unless you do it. Do not sit on 
the bleachers, eloquently finding 
fault with the blundering but 
earnest players doing their best. 
Get into the game with your knowl- 
edge, your skill. The value of 
your kicking depends upon where 
you do it and what you kick. The 
ball is to be got across the goal. 
And every man must do the thing 
he can do best in the great game. 

And the third of these laws is 
the law of urgency. I wonder how 

201 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

many of you men have over your 
desks that little motto, "Do it 
now." You apply that in your 
business. To-morrow will not do. 
You must be prompt. But in re- 
ligious activities? It seems to me 
that the King's business is almost 
paralyzed by superfluous deliberate- 
ness. You are not religiously lazy, 
certainly not, but your calmness in 
the face of religious duties is really 
excessive. 

The fourth rule is the rule of 
size, which, being interpreted, is 
that every man is to do the largest 
work he can do; that when there is 
a choice between the significant and 
the insignificant, the large and the 
small, the important and the unim- 
portant, every man must choose the 
significant, the large, the important 
according to the measure of his 
aptitude and opportunity. If you 

202 



LETTERS TO MEN 

have five talents of power, do not 
consume them upon a one-talent 
task. Do not waste or exhaust 
first-class abilities upon fourth-class 
activities. 

These are, in the main, the laws 
that should govern our activities. I 
know how unsatisfactory they are, 
and how they cannot save a man from 
using his own mind all the time in 
their application. They will, how- 
ever, if conscientiously applied, save 
a man from the wholly haphazard, 
uncontrolled, undirected activity 
which marks most men's lives. 
These rules must work together. 
No one or two of them alone will 
answer as a basis for a rich, full 
life. A good man looks after his 
family, but that is not the only 
thing a good man does. He also 
helps to save the city, the common- 
wealth, and the world. The ac- 
203 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

tivity of a man must cover the 
world in its scope; he must pray 
for and seek to bring in the king- 
dom. That is large and command- 
ing; but if a man interested in the 
kingdom neglects his own house- 
hold, he is worse than an infidel. 

All the time in writing you these 
letters I have been thinking of that 
other Man. Somehow he seems to 
be the key to all these important 
matters. We were interested in his 
beliefs, his habits, his relations. 
They all seemed good. So with his 
activities. They all seem good. 
You remember when John the Bap- 
tist, that strenuous, urgent soul, 
grew doubtful and impatient and 
sent word to the Master to declare 
himself. John thought things ought 
to go faster and be more dramatic. 
And this was Jesus's reply: "Go 
and tell John the things which ye 
204 



LETTERS TO MEN 

hear and see: the blind receive their 
sight, and the lame walk, the lepers 
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the 
dead are raised up, and the poor 
have the good tidings preached to 
them. ,, He brings good news and 
he does good deeds. More than 
that could hardly be said. And 
doing good deeds was his habit. It 
is a lesson in activity just to watch 
him. I suppose some of the men 
who saw him often were lazy like 
some of us. Our age and country 
have no monopoly of laziness. But 
a lazy man or an idle man must 
have been made frightfully uncom- 
fortable by the diligence, the energy, 
the sustained activity of Jesus. 

And I am not now thinking 
chiefly of his miracles. It is our 
easy habit to think that if we could 
do such extraordinary things we 
should be at it all the time. But 
205 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

that is not true. The life of Jesus 
was not a startling succession of 
wonders. He went about doing 
good all the time, but not doing 
wonders all the time. The remark- 
able thing is not the occasional 
miraculous exhibition of his power, 
but the constant, common, ordinary 
application of it to life. He was all 
the time comforting, cheering, en- 
couraging, correcting, loving, help- 
ing, inspiring men and women in 
need. One of my friends is a 
mathematical genius. He can do 
those bewildering sums like adding 
five or six columns of figures at 
once. He does not set great store 
by his ability to do the extraor- 
dinary. He prizes much more 
highly the ability to perform life's 
daily sums with accuracy. When 
he was doing the amazing things I 
never seemed to be in his class. 
206 



LETTERS TO MEN 

But one day when I found him 
trying to find an error in his check- 
book, a simple blunder of subtrac- 
tion which affected his bank balance, 
a strange sense of kinship arose 
within me. If certain features of 
Jesus's life stood alone, he would 
appear to men like a hero of myth- 
ology, but his life is so made up as 
to touch our lives with a sense of its 
kinship. A believing man can un- 
derstand the things Jesus believed; 
a filial man can comprehend Jesus' 
sense of his own Sonship and God's 
Fatherhood; a praying man is not 
confused by Jesus's habits of 
prayer; an active man with the 
spirit of service and of sacrifice 
will perfectly appreciate the Mas- 
ter's activities. He will understand 
the motive and the spirit of Jesus. 
Really, this is the test: in the face 
of your Master's devotion and ac- 
207 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

tivity how does your own life look 
to you? How do you think it looks 
to him? Is the motive to activity 
present powerfully in your life as in 
his? Have you, as had he, always 
the will to do? Are you compelled 
to whip yourself into the perform- 
ance of such tasks as he performed 
with zest? Do you do doggedly 
what he did joyfully? 

You may think that I ought to 
have made a list of activities for 
you. And what a list I could have 
made! Sir Philip Sidney, when 
only a lad, wrote to his brother: 
"If there are any good wars, I shall 
attend them." And what wars 
there are just now ! — wars for Christ, 
wars for humanity; wars for men, 
wars for women, wars for children; 
wars at home, wars abroad; wars 
calling for all the soldierly spirit 
and heroic temper alive in the 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

world this day. And the thing that 
is lacking is not the call but the 
response. Of what use is a list of 
activities to a man with neither will 
nor motive, with neither heroism 
nor energy? The question of your 
activities at last goes back to your 
personal sharing of the life of Him 
who went about doing good. I 
would not like the curse of Meroz 
to fall on you: 

Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of Jehovah, 
Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, 
Because they came not to the help of Jehovah, 
To the help of Jehovah against the mighty. 

Nor do I want any of us to hear 
spoken to us such words as those 
with which Henry IV greeted Cril- 
Ion, who had been absent when a 
battle was fought : 

"Go and hang yourself, brave Crillon, we fought 
at Arques and you were not there," 

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A MAN'S RELIGION 

Some day we shall come face to 
face with the Master of all good 
work, and I want him to say to each 
of us, "Well done." We shall really 
never deserve it, but if we do our 
wisest and best, he will say it. 
Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



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LETTERS TO MEN 



LETTER XIV 
The Endless Life 

Dear Brethren: This is the last 
of these letters, and I am nowhere 
near through with what I want to 
say. There are at least as many 
more first-class subjects upon which 
I want to write to you. But I must 
let them all go for the present and 
write only this one letter on The 
Endless Life. 

This is a subject somewhat ban- 
ished from recent talk and speech, 
but coming back into its own again 
in a new and better way. Men 
wearied once of the excessive talk of 
the hereafter and cried out against 
it. They insisted that the present 
life was the one thing with which 
religion had to do. They insisted 
that harps or fires in the future were 

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A MAN'S RELIGION 

not so important as current heavens 
and hells ; that recognition of friends 
hereafter was not as urgent as the 
recognition of brothers right here. 
The age became practical — a few 
years ago — and made a new reli- 
gious speech, a new appeal, a new 
program, even a new hymnology. 

A lot of that reaction was per- 
fectly good and wholesome. The 
present world is a better world be- 
cause of it. The present life is 
more humane and altruistic because 
men have been forced to face it. It 
has done us all good to think soberly 
of the life that now is. But it 
never will do to forget everything 
else while you are devoting your- 
self to one thing, no matter how 
good. The vein of exclusiveness is 
not so valuable as the "vein of 
comprehensiveness' ' in all these mat- 
ters. The life that is to come has 

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LETTERS TO MEN 

immense practical meaning in the 
life that now is. And there is a 
wholesome return, not to the ex- 
clusive consideration of the future, 
but to its sane consideration. We 
are trying now to hold to the sense 
of the unity of life and to keep all 
that is good, active, and vital. 

The endless life seems necessary as 
a daily force and power. We do not 
seem able to do our best in this prac- 
tical world if this is all there is of it. 
Nothing is good except the best. 
Only the perfect will satisfy at last. 
Of course I know that many brave, 
fine men, not clear or sure about the 
future, took Matthew Arnold's po- 
sition and did the best they could. 
You remember what he said: 

Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high! 

Sits there no Judge in heaven our sin to see? 

More strictly, then, the inward judge obey! 
Was Christ a man like us? A hi let us try 

If we, then, too, can be such men as hel 

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A MAN'S RELIGION 

Those are noble words. They make 
every real man who reads them 
straighten himself to meet their call 
in letter and spirit. I remember see- 
ing the lines, written in Arnold's own 
handwriting, in a certain private li- 
brary in New York. They seemed 
like a strong man's clear appeal to 
all men, especially to those who had 
in any measure lost faith. But the 
note is resolute and grim rather than 
exultant and triumphant. Human- 
ity living nobly on an "if" is an 
inspiring spectacle, but men like us 
cannot always or long live on an 
"if." 

I set over against these five lines 
the prayer of Dean Latimer, my old 
teacher in theology, who taught us 
so much more religion than he did 
theology. Old students of Boston 
will recall the familiar, earnest 
phrase that came out at the close of 
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LETTERS TO MEN 

every prayer: "Save us with the 
power of an endless life." When I 
heard if first it did not much move 
me. When I heard it next I thought 
it a pet phrase such as men like to 
use even in their prayers. But I 
learned better than that. It was 
not a pet phrase, a favorite well- 
sounding sentence. It was not a 
prayer that we might live forever. 
It went vastly deeper than that 
both in Latimer's life and his 
prayer. It was the prayer that men 
living in time, living in illness often, 
living in weariness, living where the 
tides grow feeble and the energies 
flag, should be saved with the 
power, the strength, the almighti- 
ness of a life beyond the reach of 
death, saved with the power of an 
indestructible life. It was not a 
prayer that we should be saved 
from dying, but should be free from 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

the lifelong slavery to dying by 
this life that death cannot touch. 
I can easily recall, across the lapse 
of more than thirty years, the eve- 
ning when these words, spoken again 
in that great, quiet man's prayer, 
came to me like a new, fresh gospel 
of power. A hundred things fell 
into right relations under this in- 
fluence and have never wholly been 
disturbed in the years since. 

You see, I am trying to put this 
whole question so that we shall get 
the sense of eternity under our sense 
of time, the sense of the indestructi- 
ble under our sense of the perish- 
able, the sense of the immortal 
under our awful sense of mortality; 
that we should know whence we 
came and whither we go, even as we 
take up life's lowly tasks; that this 
sense of the life that death cannot 
reach will give us zest and power 
216 



LETTERS TO MEN 

in the things of this life; that be- 
hind determined fidelity like Ar- 
nold's shall go rapturous conviction 
like Paul's and serene, strong as- 
surance like the Master's; that we 
shall know for ourselves as we toil 
that we do not labor in vain; that 
we shall know for ourselves that 

God's greatness flows round our incompleteness; 
Round our restlessness his rest. 

I am writing to some scholars, to 
others full of great plans, men often 
torn with the sense of life's brevity, 
and I am asking them to gather 
their apparatus and make their plans 
for unending work, crying out with 
Browning : 

What's time? Leave now for dogs and apes; 
Man has forever. 

For Latimer's prayer will be an- 
swered for men who will have it 
answered. 

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A MAN'S RELIGION 

I was not willing to close these 
letters without one more word from 
the man already quoted at length. 
So I asked him to tell us in his own 
way how this question of the End- 
less Life looks to him. This is his 
reply, received even as I write you: 

"On this, as on other deep issues 
of religion and life, I have traveled 
far in my experience and opinions. 
I heard Bishop Foster's lectures at 
Chautauqua away back in the seven- 
ties, and at the time could hardly 
forgive him for saying that he did 
not know that there is a life beyond 
the grave. It seemed to me he 
ought to know. As the years have 
gone, however, I have acquired a 
growing list of most precious ex- 
periences which I cannot define and 
beliefs which I cannot prove. This 
is one of them. I would not like to 
be compelled to prove to anybody 
218 



LETTERS TO MEN 

else that there is an endless life, 
and I would not like to be com- 
pelled to live without the sense of 
it. There is much mystery and 
difficulty about the whole subject, 
but I have found that one can hold 
a very firm faith in the face of a 
very large mystery. I can stand the 
mystery of the life eternal very 
much better than the emptiness and 
inadequacy of the life temporal. 

"I think I weigh the proofs and 
arguments fairly and estimate them 
at what they are worth. To my 
mind the main ones have never been 
answered. But as life goes on my 
belief in the life everlasting seems to 
rest more and more upon a sense of 
it than upon an argument for it. I 
think Horace Bushnell said some- 
thing like that. You know how the 
beliefs of the best and wisest men 
impress me; how particularly the be- 
219 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

liefs of Jesus impress me. He clearly 
believed, in this eternal life, right 
in quantity and quality. His argu- 
ments for it are few but tremen- 
dous, his evident consciousness of it 
unshaken even in the trying expe- 
riences of his life. In time he lived 
like an eternal Person, just as in 
space he lived like an universal one. 
I take my place with him, 'believ- 
ing, with him, where I cannot 
prove/ If any other man doubts, I 
am sorry, but I cannot give up my 
faith and my assurance because I 
cannot impart them to him. I must 
keep my faith and go into the un- 
seen believing with Jesus, and the 
future must decide between any 
doubter and myself. 

"It is not chiefly the speculative 
side of the subject that appeals to 
me. I used to argue about it, trying 
to convince myself and others and 

220 



LETTERS TO MEN 

trying to define it in some clear 
terms. The practical side of the 
eternal life appeals to me now more 
than any other. The practice of 
the life everlasting looks beautiful to 
me. I am not very skillful at it, 
but it is worth working at all the 
time. Jesus did it to perfection. 
He brought life and immortality to 
light; he set them walking the 
streets. He had the words of 
eternal life. He used that language 
in daily speech. I like it in him. I 
like it in others when I hear it. I 
would like to speak always as a 
man whose citizenship is in heaven. 
And I wish that in this way my 
speech would betray me. I like the 
way he filled his daily life with good 
deeds, some of them lowly, like 
washing the disciples' feet; some of 
them magnificent, like healing the 
leper. It all seems to me to belong 

221 



A MAN'S RELIGION 

to an eternal man living in time. I 
used to ask myself how an immortal 
man would live, and when a man 
became immortal. Jesus answers 
both questions. He was immortal 
all the time and lived like a man 
who had seen and would see again 
what we call the better world. 
There was nothing theatrical or 
mock-heroic about it. Because he 
was eternal he lived like that. That 
makes the eternal life seem so dis- 
tinctly a practical thing. I want to 
live like that. It seems to me that 
a man who is going to live forever 
ought to live now as he would like 
to live always. I do not want life 
to have to change direction at the 
grave. So I cultivate by practice a 
taste for those heavenly things. O! 
I know I do many of the things I al- 
ways did, but they look different now, 
with the eternal radiance on them. 

222 



LETTERS TO MEN 

" So I fill my life with happy mem- 
ories and beautiful pictures. I do 
not want to forget this life when I 
come into the other. It seems to 
me it will make me very glad to talk 
over life's deep and holy experiences 
with friends who have shared them. 
I think I shall be richer by so much 
as I carry a large or small store of 
such memories with me. And I try 
to get ready for that other world. 
I do not mean getting ready to die. 
The King of that country and this 
will send for me. I must be ready, 
with the habits of mind, the char- 
acter and qualities of life and heart, 
the manners and graces that one 
ought to have when he goes to 
dwell in the King's palace. I have 
read that when William Blake, the 
painter and poet, lay dying, he 
said 'he was going to that country 
he had all his life wished to see/ 
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A MAN'S RELIGION 

and shortly 'he burst into singing of 
the things he saw/ Really, I quite 
understand that. I remember a fair 
young woman who thought that in 
what we call delirium she heard 
choir boys singing the Angelus. I 
think she did. 

"So for me the future life is not 
nearly so much a mystery as an 
influence, an inspiration, and a 
power. I share it now imperfectly 
as I expect once to share it per- 
fectly with my ever-living Master 
and the friends who 'cannot be 
where he is not/ It makes this life 
more beautiful and more brave, 
more sweet and significant. So I 
walk with him here, not eager to 
go out of this life which I find 
good, but confident against the 
day when 

"I shall see Him face to face 
And be with Him for evermore." 

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LETTERS TO MEN 

And with these words, dear breth- 
ren, and with Latimer's prayer that 
we all may be "saved with the 
power of an endless life," I close 
these letters. 

Ever yours, 

W. F. M. 



225 



MAR 6 1913 



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